For x264/h264 i use coreavc
for Mpeg2 i use Dscaler5 or cyberlink mpeg2 decoder

For original discs i use cyberlink powerdvd ultra

CoreAVC uses the same codecs as VLC, I think. So that would probably be a part of the explanation. I'm still amazed that it's possible with a five year old CPU, though.

VLC uses a different codec, CoreAVC is closed source after all.

there is nothing strange about it at all, in fact the slowest core2duo's run at lower GHZ than my AthlonXP, its just that their pipelines are better and that they support newer Simd extentions like sse2 and sse3

i think any 1 ghz+ computer should be able to run any videocontent with the help of a DXVA videocard, so cyberlinks SSE2 only approach is stupid(especially since MMX and SSE cpu's fall back to software decode)

Imho these hardware accelerated agp cards where made for non sse2 computers and thus cyberlink should update their codecs

Or ATI should make drivers that work. Or even better: Their tech guys could try shoot a few E-mails back and forth and see if they could solve it together! But we all know that isn't gonna happen with all the pointy haired morons running the show... I feel sorry for those who have the AGP cards, but I'm afraid I don't think ATI's putting too much work into supporting the day before yesterday's technology.

Yeah,

starting from the athlonXP 2500+ any hdready content is playable without videocard assistance

So 720P MKV video is fully playable, MPEG2 is in my case playable in 1080p, 1080i can be done, but with a quick deinterlacing algorythm that will cause jaggies
Thats great tetsuo55! If you can play 720p and all you have to do is add a inexpensive video card for 1080p then thats great news for some people that have old equipment. Since I use an OLD outdated Athlon 64 X2 4200+, 2Gig mem and 2600 512 Pro as my HTPC, I would love to dig out my older AMD Athlon XP 2200+ processor and MB and use that for my HTPC. Now were talking GREEN. It's a shame when some people think you need the latest hardware to run HD content and blast you when you can get away with running older technology. My hats off to those that do.:) PS: I use my video card for the HDMI interface on the Sony KDF-46E2000 via the ATI adapter and Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Keyboard and Mouse 7000. Nice neat package.

lol whats a 'pointy haired moron' ?

Anyway greetings all, my first post. Came across this forum recently whilst research for my setup, and its been good reading. I have had the luxury of piecing together a 'HTPC' from scratch based on a Core 2 Duo 2.33, Intel DG33TL 'Media Series' mobo, 2GB RAM, Saphire HD2800 Pro, LG BD/HD DVD drive, Antec case hooked up to Onkyo 5,1 system with an Acer 32" LCD, Vista home premium (I took the plunge), Micro$oft Home Entertainment 8000 kbd/mouse set just got it all working, havent tested a BD/HD DVD yet, they still in the post.

I am using a 15" LCD as the primary (used Dell), the 32" Acer TV as the secondary, both hooked up via DVI just sussing it out at this stage since for years I have had my home PC hooked up via coax to the home hifi system for years but come stuck with HD content and since a lot of nature programs like BBC's Planet Earth and Blue Planet have been published in HD, there was no turning back. I plan on using Power DVD Ultra and Zoom player when I can since thats a great piece of software, Winamp for music (old habits die hard). I have a gigabit Ethernet connection to my study PC where I will store all the media (clunker at the moment, Quad core coming soon)

My existing set in my study use a Dual screen Maxtor card that supported 'Video Overlay' that outputed PAL video to the RCA dongle, now from what I can figure to get my dual screen system to work is to set the screens as a 1,2 arrangement, drag PowerDVD over to the big screen when I am ready to watch, maximise it on the second screen. PowerDVD has a dual screen setup option to stream the video to the second screen but those options are greyed out for some reason, maybe there is another seamles and hassle free way to run dual screen setup, perhaps someone can advise. Other option would be to have the same res on both displays and run clone mode? Both are 60Hz refresh rate.

I am hoping it will all work as advertised, and I dont have to spend time tweaking registry settings and running hacked gizmos, although I havent managed to get though the 126 pages of this thread yet to find my answers I am sure they are there somewhere.

Thanks again for all the informative postings.

Don;t rush out and buy a new videocard, as long as there is no DXVA/h264 non-sse2 decoder only VC1 and MPEG2 will be accelerated

lol whats a 'pointy haired moron' ?
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/the_characters/index.html#boss
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/the_characters/images/icon_the_boss.gif

Don;t rush out and buy a new videocard, as long as there is no DXVA/h264 non-sse2 decoder only VC1 and MPEG2 will be acceleratedFWIW, AVC/H264 from either HD DVD or BRD plays back great on my Athlon XP 3200+ nForce2 PC with a VisionTek 2600 Pro 512MB AGP card.

This is a Barton CPU, so it does not have SSE2.

I am using PDVD 3319a.

-Dave

FWIW, AVC/H264 from either HD DVD or BRD plays back great on my Athlon XP 3200+ nForce2 PC with a VisionTek 2600 Pro 512MB AGP card.

This is a Barton CPU, so it does not have SSE2.

I am using PDVD 3319a.

-Dave

H264 plays back great in what resolution? 720p or 1080p?

My amd 32 bit Athlon XP running at 2.4 ghz with an x800 xl can ALMOST play back 1080p well. I get some frame drops here and there and it causes the audio to lose sync. I am looking for a solution, and was jus thinking of the 2600 line of cards.

Thanks.

It would be a good deal if I could get it to work. No Luck on HDMI connection at all -
Also a website I view a lot that displays Flash based video as a full screen option displays only two triangles in full screen mode (this worked fine with my previous X600 based video card) in both DVI and VGA in all supported resolutions.

Ok, I got the card to output to the HDMI, clearly the VGA and HDMI cannot be connected and active at the same time on this new style card (Two techs at Diamond MM told me otherwise today!) I was able to connect to the VGA display with the DVI-VGA adapter so both connections now work. Audio is good as well with the realtek drivers.

Now on to "Full Screen" Flash - this worked with my previous X600 card!

I just see a blank screen or the screen cut into two different triangles in full screen mode!

http://www.flashcomguru.com/apps/fullscreen_player9/fullscreen.htm

This site is an example of full screen flash and it doesn't display.

Any thoughts - does this site work in full screen mode with your card, if so what drivers. I currently have the newest 7.12 drivers.

Thanks.

H264 plays back great in what resolution? 720p or 1080p?

My amd 32 bit Athlon XP running at 2.4 ghz with an x800 xl can ALMOST play back 1080p well. I get some frame drops here and there and it causes the audio to lose sync. I am looking for a solution, and was jus thinking of the 2600 line of cards.

Thanks.I am using 1080p.

-Dave

Hi there,
Yesterday i try new 7.12 drivers set from ati on my Radeon 2400Pro Agp system. I can't believe that i have to modify .inf files because de setup program do not reconogice my agp card :mad: . This drivers does not fix anything for me. I can DVXA only Mpeg2 at 720p and 1080p with 30-50% CPU utlization on may Athlon XP 1900+.
I think DVXA of h264 is a fake from Ati on this Agp cards and will never work correctly. CPU utilization is 100% on h264 at 1080p and 50-70 at 720p and there is nothing i can do to solve this problem.
I spend 60€ with this 2400pro agp card but that is cheap compared with over 30-40 hours i waste making this to work...
This was may first and last Ati Graphics card. I always buy 3dfx and now nvidia cards because i think they are better supported.

Regard,

Good Bye Ati !!!

FWIW, AVC/H264 from either HD DVD or BRD plays back great on my Athlon XP 3200+ nForce2 PC with a VisionTek 2600 Pro 512MB AGP card.

This is a Barton CPU, so it does not have SSE2.

I am using PDVD 3319a.

-Dave

Are you sure DXVA is enabled?
What version of windows are you using?
What version of the ati drivers are you using?

Does it work outside of powerdvd? like in media player classic for example?

I was bidding on a 2600 Pro AGP on ebay for the last couple of days, I put my max at $80 before reading almost all of this thread....well with 4 hours to go I thought I was doomed with what seems to be this worthless AGP card. But looks like some other nut just outbid me, of course to my pleasure, now I dont have to go through the headache that most other AGP users had.

I know this is in the wrong forum, but can anyone else reccomend something other then a 2X00 for 720p video play? I dont need blu-ray playback, just something much better then my intel on board video I am using now.

Thanks,

That's quite normal - the "GPU" measured there isn't the bit used for decoding h264/vc1, it only does deinterlacing, scaling and other postprocessing. If you minimise the window so it's not scaling it'll be at 2% or something.

Try playing some interlaced mpeg2, then you'll see the poor thing working its nuts off.

I´m a little confused about what thing is done in the cpu or the gpu. I'm new in the htpc word and instead of reading and reading the posts can´t order my mind.
The decoding is 100% done in the cpu? If the gpu only make the deinterlacing, scaling and posprocessing (10% usage) why not to use a on board video and let the cpu do the rest?
May be you can link me to a thead where I can go for the begining...:D

FYI - the cyberlink H264 decoder works when you install the newest version of PowerDVD - YOU DON'T HAVE TO BUY & REGISTER POWERDVD TO ENABLE DXVA OF H264.

DC

I am done with AGP.

For the cost of a new motherboard, memory and videocard, I now have hardware acceleration.

It is nice when things just work.

I´m a little confused about what thing is done in the cpu or the gpu. I'm new in the htpc word and instead of reading and reading the posts can´t order my mind.


The card has 2 components important here:

UVD: does h264 and VC1 acceleration, so the CPU is doing pretty much nothing

Shaders: do mpeg2 acceleration (not full, roughly halfs CPU usage), and deinterlacing, scaling, denoising, sharpening, etc.

I think DVXA of h264 is a fake from Ati on this Agp cards and will never work correctly. CPU utilization is 100% on h264 at 1080p and 50-70 at 720p and there is nothing i can do to solve this problem.

The fact that you can actually play any kind of 1080p h264 material at any resolution (in your case 720p) on such a weak processor means that the HW acceleration on the card is actually working. You will not see better numbers with any kind of video card, unless you upgrade your CPU.
Your other 2 big mistakes are:
1) Mixing 3-4 year old with current technology (applies to all PC technology)
2) Buying the cheapest video card and expecting great results (applies to everything in general)

I am done with AGP.

For the cost of a new motherboard, memory and videocard, I now have hardware acceleration.

It is nice when things just work.

DDR2 ram is dirt cheap these days anyway. You can get a decent CPU/RAM/MB for $125 these days if you buy from Fry's sales.

Why keep messing with AGP when the price is so cheap to move on? And you can sell your PC3200 ram for a premium.

The fact that you can actually play any kind of 1080p h264 material at any resolution (in your case 720p) on such a weak processor means that the HW acceleration on the card is actually working. You will not see better numbers with any kind of video card, unless you upgrade your CPU.
Your other 2 big mistakes are:
1) Mixing 3-4 year old with current technology (applies to all PC technology)
2) Buying the cheapest video card and expecting great results (applies to everything in general)

ditcho my Radeon 2400 PRO Agp card system requeriments are:

Pentium or Athlon Compatible CPU
128 MB system memory
Mother Board with free AGP (4x/8x) slot

i read a lot of threads and reviews that claims this card utilices 3-10% of cpu playing h264 full hd content on athlon XP 1900+ cpus and this systems are Agp based like mine.

I think buying 2400 pro i do my best because with 2600 i would have the same results on DVXA.

I mix 3-4 years technology because ati offers me posibility for do that telling me promises of playing today 1080p videos on my old Agp system.

DVXA is no working on h264 720p content because Dvxa checkbox is greyed and disabled on powerDvd 7.3ultra and GPU utlization is over 10-20% running the GPU at 100Mhz!!! :-(
.

So to anyone with,

WINDOWS XP and
2400 AGP

try this package,

cnc.download.colorful.cn/VGA/ATI/amd_sample_8.40_rc3_xp_july16_br50518.rar

It is the only one that i have HA on everything, and CPU utilization 4-8%.

Try it if you have the time.....

Of course after the installation you must apply the registry tweaks...

Good luck everyone.

So to anyone with,

WINDOWS XP and
2400 AGP

try this package,

cnc.download.colorful.cn/VGA/ATI/amd_sample_8.40_rc3_xp_july16_br50518.rar

It is the only one that i have HA on everything, and CPU utilization 4-8%.

Try it if you have the time.....

Of course after the installation you must apply the registry tweaks...

Good luck everyone.

The rar package is damaged.

The rar package is damaged.
spelosi change .rar to .exe
So to anyone with,

WINDOWS XP and
2400 AGP

try this package,

cnc.download.colorful.cn/VGA/ATI/amd_sample_8.40_rc3_xp_july16_br50518.rar

It is the only one that i have HA on everything, and CPU utilization 4-8%.

Try it if you have the time.....

Of course after the installation you must apply the registry tweaks...

Good luck everyone.

HA not working for me:
WINDOWS XP
ATI HD 2400 AGP
BARTON 2600+
Cyberlink PDVD 7.3
ATI HD2x00 Registry Tweaks 0.11
test on hard disk file movies .ts .wmv
:(

So to anyone with,

WINDOWS XP and
2400 AGP

try this package,

cnc.download.colorful.cn/VGA/ATI/amd_sample_8.40_rc3_xp_july16_br50518.rar

It is the only one that i have HA on everything, and CPU utilization 4-8%.

Try it if you have the time.....

Of course after the installation you must apply the registry tweaks...

Good luck everyone.

Link is broken for me. I download it from

http://telecom.download.colorful.cn/VGA/ATI/amd_sample_8.40_rc3_xp_july16_br50518.rar

File size is 168Mb :eek:

I will try this next day

emilot I have read your posts on this forum... still no HA with hard disk file movies? like .ts .avi .mov ????

I don't have bluray nor hd dvd drive for original material testing.. i always work from my hard disk with movie trailes and video samples, problably that was my great mistake..

Mpeg2 accelerates ok for me even with 1080p 20mbit transfer rates that uses 40-50% of my modest Athlon XP 1900+ cpu. GPU is 70-80% at 550mhz on those files playback. Image Quality is better than with my NV 6600GT PCIe using pure video.

Thank you



Thank you

Guys sorry but i must to make it clear....

I test HA with, Powerdvd and BlueRay, HDDVD movies(not clips) from Hard Disk and with DVBViewer Pro with H264 DVB-S2 channels.

With H264 ts files its ok, BUT you must run them with the Cyberlink Powerdvd Codec to have HA.....

I dont know about wmv and sure no with mkv!!!(because lack of codecs)..

Thnx!!

Guys sorry but i must to make it clear....

I test HA with, Powerdvd and BlueRay, HDDVD movies(not clips) from Hard Disk and with DVBViewer Pro with H264 DVB-S2 channels.

With H264 ts files its ok, BUT you must run them with the Cyberlink Powerdvd Codec to have HA.....

I dont know about wmv and sure no with mkv!!!(because lack of codecs)..

Thnx!!

I test HA with Powerdvd - HD clips from Hard Disk and with ALTDVB (Powerdvd Codec) with H264 DVB-S channels.

With H264 ts files i run them with the Cyberlink Powerdvd Codec.

Not working for me - CPU utilization 100%.

Bad news for non SSE2 cpu users

It seems cyberlinks h264 decoder only allows DXVA if you have a SSE2 or higher CPU.

Now i have not had the chance to test any of the other DXVA decoders, has anyone tried nero or arcsoft on a non-SSE2 cpu?(athlonXP/PentiumIII or older cpu)

It is my problem maybe.

I test HA with Powerdvd - HD clips from Hard Disk and with ALTDVB (Powerdvd Codec) with H264 DVB-S channels.

With H264 ts files i run them with the Cyberlink Powerdvd Codec.

Not working for me - CPU utilization 100%.



What CPU you have emilot?


HT 3.20Ghz Prescot P4
Assume that you put the registry tweaks ah?

HT 3.20Ghz Prescot P4
Assume that you put the registry tweaks ah?

Yes, ATI HD2x00 Registry Tweaks 0.11.
SSE2 it is my problem maybe.

spelosi change .rar to .exe


HA not working for me:
WINDOWS XP
ATI HD 2400 AGP
BARTON 2600+
Cyberlink PDVD 7.3
ATI HD2x00 Registry Tweaks 0.11
test on hard disk file movies .ts .wmv
:(

You won't get any acceleration with wmvs for two reasons.

1) Firstly WMP11 on XP only supports WMV Modes A and B. On Vists WMP11 supports Modes A, B and C (possibly D as well though I haven't seen this in action). The ATi Radeon HD cards support only mode D (the fully accelerated mode where the demuxed video is sent directly to the videocard ). PowerDVD cannot use hardware acceleration for WMVs for some reason and it'll usually play stuff back in the video overlay which should reduce the CPU requirements but it's still pure software playback.

WMP11 can use H/A but you need to enable it under Tools/Options/Performance?Advanced.

2) ATi don't expose the WMV9 Mode D accelerator capability. They list VC-1 Mode D ( VC-1 is WMV9 Advanced profile ) but not WMV Mode D. That was the case under both XP and Vista with my Radeon HD 2600 XT with Cats 7.7-7.11. I don't know if this is still the case.

Your best bet towards testing HD H/A is to download a HD 1080p Quicktime trailer and play it back with PowerDVD 7 Deluxe or Ultra ( as these support H.264 acceleration ). Try playing it back with Quicktime and compare the CPU utilisation with PowerDVD7.

The thing to note is that even without H/A PowerDVD7 is very efficient, as efficient as CoreAVC in software mode for quicktime trailers (with SSE2 support ) so I would verify in the information tab that "DXVA in use" is shown.

[EDIT] Oops! Sorry I missed the bit about your having tried H.264 DVB streams. Apologies.

You could try running DXDiag.EXE under Vista and XP and seeing what capabilities are being listed there.

What I got under XP was:

---------------
Display Devices
---------------

...

Video Accel: ModeMPEG2_C ModeMPEG2_D ModeWMV8_A ModeWMV9_A

I no longer have the Vista DXDiag file. It would be good to see what the Radeon HD series now claims to support.

You could actually use this: http://bluesky23.hp.infoseek.co.jp/dxvaChecker_ss.html

and check what the capabilites are. This should list all of them including H.264 and they're exactly the same interfaces on XP and Vista (i.e. same COM IIDs).

With my 8600 GTS under XP this is what I get:

http://sparrowhawk.no-ip.info/images/DXVA%20Capabilities%208600%20GTS%20XP.png

There is one thing to be aware of though with DXVA caps. nVidia used to lie about supporting WMV Modes A and B on the AGP 6600 GTs though it didn't actually support them.

My AMD Athlon XP 1900+ supports 3dnow and SSE but not SSE2, Has anybody confirmed relationship with SSE2 and DVXA capabilities??

This is de growing list of SSE2 CPUS extracted from wikipedia:

CPUs supporting SSE2

* AMD K8-based CPUs (Athlon 64, Sempron 64, Turion 64, etc)
* Intel NetBurst-based CPUs (Pentium 4, Xeon, Celeron, etc)
* Intel Pentium M and Celeron M
* Intel Celeron D tested with CPU-Z
* Intel Core-based CPUs (Core Duo, Core Solo, etc)
* Intel Core 2-based CPUs (Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, etc)
* Transmeta Efficeon
* Via C7

We have to try 2400-2600 agp card with those CPUs

Regards

...You could try running DXDiag.EXE under Vista and XP and seeing what capabilities are being listed there.

What I got under XP was...


I have DXDiag:
Video Accel: ModeMPEG2_C ModeMPEG2_D ModeWMV8_A ModeWMV9_A

And DXVA Checker:

ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO AGP
ModeMPEG2_IDCT: 720x480
BB0796AE-2ED4-468D-A182-38F2CEADECF8:
B1A56F6C-2E7F-432F-8F09-8DED43B3CEE4:
ModeH264_Unknown_Avivo:
30AF325C-3CDF-4539-9D95-0548DCB6CD25:
ModeH264_VLD_NoFGT:
0184C6D4-F80C-4299-ADA9-6A6087FB9D00:
ModeVC1_VLD: 720x480 / 1280x720 / 1920x1080
51911E1A-9FAD-424E-9C9A-D1D97E17F56B:
ModeWMV8_PostProc: 720x480 / 1280x720
ModeWMV9_PostProc: 720x480 / 1280x720

What it means?

Regards
Zyga

ModeMPEG2_IDCT: 720x480
ModeVC1_VLD: 720x480 / 1280x720 / 1920x1080
ModeWMV8_PostProc: 720x480 / 1280x720
ModeWMV9_PostProc: 720x480 / 1280x720

What it means?



1080p acceleration for VC1, 720p acceleration for WMV, SD acceleration for mpeg2, and none for h264.

The lack of mpeg2 HD acceleration is normal for a 2400 though, so you can probably get it back with the dxva_nohddecode=0 registry tweak (see my sig).

1080p acceleration for VC1, 720p acceleration for WMV, SD acceleration for mpeg2, and none for h264.

The lack of mpeg2 HD acceleration is normal for a 2400 though, so you can probably get it back with the dxva_nohddecode=0 registry tweak (see my sig).

Yes i have also Mpeg2 acceleration!!!

1080p acceleration for VC1, 720p acceleration for WMV, SD acceleration for mpeg2, and none for h264.

The lack of mpeg2 HD acceleration is normal for a 2400 though, so you can probably get it back with the dxva_nohddecode=0 registry tweak (see my sig).

I run ATI_HD2x00_Reg_Tweaks_0.11 but nothing changed :(

Thanks
Zyga

I have DXDiag:
Video Accel: ModeMPEG2_C ModeMPEG2_D ModeWMV8_A ModeWMV9_A

And DXVA Checker:

ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO AGP
ModeMPEG2_IDCT: 720x480
BB0796AE-2ED4-468D-A182-38F2CEADECF8:
B1A56F6C-2E7F-432F-8F09-8DED43B3CEE4:
ModeH264_Unknown_Avivo:
30AF325C-3CDF-4539-9D95-0548DCB6CD25:
ModeH264_VLD_NoFGT:
0184C6D4-F80C-4299-ADA9-6A6087FB9D00:
ModeVC1_VLD: 720x480 / 1280x720 / 1920x1080
51911E1A-9FAD-424E-9C9A-D1D97E17F56B:
ModeWMV8_PostProc: 720x480 / 1280x720
ModeWMV9_PostProc: 720x480 / 1280x720

What it means?

Regards
Zyga

You have H.264 full acceleration upto 1080p ( Mode D ), WMV9 Mode A (post-proc) upto 720p, VC1 in Mode D,VC-1 full bitstream decode ( Variable Length Decoder, Mode D ) and MPEG-2 Modes C & D ( iDCT for unencrypted and encrypted video ).

The acceleration modes are like this:

the higher the letter the more acceleration there is:
Mode A post-processing,
Mode B Motion Compensation
Mode C inverse discrete cosine transform
Mode D Variable Length Decoder ( full bitstream decode acceleration except for MPEG-2 where it means something else).

FGT is film grain technology, which allows film grain to be reintroduced on video which has had it removed.

The only thing you're missing is WMV acceleration as Mode A (Post-Proc) has been available in cards like the Radeon 9700/9800 and the Geforce FX. Some Geforce 6 cards had Mode A and B as did the Radeon X800/700/600. The Radeons supported it for WMV8 as well as WMV9.

According to that you should have full acceleration for everything except WMV.

Hi !

I have an Pentium IV at 2'6 Ghz with AGP and I bought a Club3D HD2400 Pro AGP card. I've installed the Visiontek drivers for AGP and the last version of PowerDVD and I have hardware acceleration for HD-DVDs and Blu-Ray discs with CPU use max of 30% on Serenity (VC1) or Die Hard 4 (AVC) and perfect and smooth playback.

Trailers from HD-DVDs remuxed in mkv format played with MPC are accelerated too.

I use the PC mainly for HTPC and I don´t need more power to do other things. Because that, I don't want to waste more money in the PC apart from the ATI Card, and it was a birthday gift.

I only want to let my message of hope for people like me that they don't want to waste more money in their PCs to get only a fluid playback of HD-DVDs or Blu-Rays.

Good luck and a Happy New Year for all.

Just wondering which driver everyone is having the most luck with for the 2400 series?

I just received my LG BD/HD-DVD drive today and I'm looking to purchase a 2400 or 2600 card purely for movies in HD - no gaming. Am I safe to go with a Visiontek 2600XT PCI-E 512Mb card? From searching it looks as though most of the issues are related to the AGP cards. Thanks for any advice.

PS - I'm on Vista

I just received my LG BD/HD-DVD drive today and I'm looking to purchase a 2400 or 2600 card purely for movies in HD - no gaming. Am I safe to go with a Visiontek 2600XT PCI-E 512Mb card? From searching it looks as though most of the issues are related to the AGP cards. Thanks for any advice.

PS - I'm on Vista

I use a 2600 Pro and have no issues with playback on my LG drive. I don't have what would be considered a super powerful system either (E6300, 2GB DDR2-667). I'm also on Vista.

According to this site:

http://ati.amd.com/technology/Avivo/h264.html

Ati seems to recommend "Nero Showtime" for h264 decoding, i have read elsewhere that the decoder works outside in MediaPlayer Classic.

According to this link:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=95939

The nero showtime decoder is the only official h264 ati decoder.

A google search reveals the following site:

http://www.cyberlink.com/cinema/ati/h264_decoder/enu/index.jsp

this seems to be a special ati only h264 decoder


When reading up on the cyberlink site, it seems that cyberlink has been an ati partner from the start, ever since the first version of AVIVO was born cyberlink has always been providing the decoders, it seems only logical then that cyberlink would have the best decoder as they know the most of the AVIVO specs


----------------------------------------

Has anyone tried the following decoders on a non-SSE2 cpu running winxp?

-Arcsoft totalmedia extreme (unoffical support for ati avivo)
-Nero showtime(this is the only official h264 hardware decoder?)
-Windvd8 (unoffical support for ati avivo)
-Mainconcept/Elecard (a lot of versions do not seem to work but some do) (unoffical support for ati avivo)

I use a 2600 Pro and have no issues with playback on my LG drive. I don't have what would be considered a super powerful system either (E6300, 2GB DDR2-667). I'm also on Vista.

Thanks for the response. I've actually changed my mind and I'll be getting the ATI-branded 2600 Pro too, mainly because the Crossfire connectors on the XT stick out too far and wouldn't fit in my case. Glad to hear your system works as it should.

spelosi change .rar to .exe


HA not working for me:
WINDOWS XP
ATI HD 2400 AGP
BARTON 2600+
Cyberlink PDVD 7.3
ATI HD2x00 Registry Tweaks 0.11
test on hard disk file movies .ts .wmv
:(

Ok, here's my current setup:

Windows XP
ATI HD 2400 AGP
Barton running at 2.4 GHZ (faster than 3200+)
Cyberlinp PDVD 7.3
ATI HD2x00 Registry Tweaks 0.11
Those ATI drivers you asked someone to try.

I am getting no HA on 1080p .ts files.

I am also getting no HA on 1080p wmv files.

CPU is running at 100%.

All files were loaded off my HDD.

I got so tired of messing around with this stuff I just ordered an X2 4800+ and mobo/ram last night.

It seems to me that this HA is a bit of a scam. It must work under some very specific circumstances, but it sure isn't useful to the average end user. Which isn't very good because I don't think the people on AVS are the average end user. If it's no good to us, then who is it good for?

You could actually use this: http://bluesky23.hp.infoseek.co.jp/dxvaChecker_ss.html

and check what the capabilites are. This should list all of them including H.264 and they're exactly the same interfaces on XP and Vista (i.e. same COM IIDs).

Is there any particular reason that this program isn't identifying 720x576 as an accelerated resolution?

Ok, here's my current setup:

Windows XP
ATI HD 2400 AGP
Barton running at 2.4 GHZ (faster than 3200+)
Cyberlinp PDVD 7.3
ATI HD2x00 Registry Tweaks 0.11
Those ATI drivers you asked someone to try.

I am getting no HA on 1080p .ts files.

I am also getting no HA on 1080p wmv files.

CPU is running at 100%.

All files were loaded off my HDD.

I got so tired of messing around with this stuff I just ordered an X2 4800+ and mobo/ram last night.

It seems to me that this HA is a bit of a scam. It must work under some very specific circumstances, but it sure isn't useful to the average end user. Which isn't very good because I don't think the people on AVS are the average end user. If it's no good to us, then who is it good for?

You are right.

Thanks for confirmation problem.

Regards
Zyga

I've been reading this monster thread for a while. I'm having HDCP problems in Vista Media Center. I believe its related to the ATI 2400 Pro in this Dell XPS 420. I'm using my own DVI to HDMI dongle to connect to an HDMI cable that goes into my Sharp LCD.

Do you think my dongle is causing the issue? I've installed the latest catalyst drivers. Any other ideas?

My issue is this, If I bypass my HDMI switcher, I can get the card to output video via the HDMI, but if I boot up connected via the switcher, I get no output. using CCC 7.11. Is there a way to force video out the HDMI? I guess the switcher is not passing back some info to the card.

I've been reading this monster thread for a while. I'm having HDCP problems in Vista Media Center. I believe its related to the ATI 2400 Pro in this Dell XPS 420. I'm using my own DVI to HDMI dongle to connect to an HDMI cable that goes into my Sharp LCD.

Do you think my dongle is causing the issue? I've installed the latest catalyst drivers. Any other ideas?

In my case I can get HDCP content only via switch. If I try to use my projector directly, the HDCP handshake will fail. HDCP implementations are obviously suffering from compatibility issues between different devices.

I have the gigabyte 690G motherboard with vista 32.. yesterday i tried to connect the dvi out from the board to the hdmi in my samsung dlp using a generic dvi-hdmi cable. It worked great. i got audio also.. Later i plugged in a powercolor hd2400pro scs3 with the same dvi - hdmi cable to my tv. now i dont get audio through hdmi.. what else should i install? i know the hd2400pro has the hdmi audio. anybody done this before? if i need the dvi-hdmi adapter from ati then how the onboard one works? please help

I have the gigabyte 690G motherboard with vista 32.. yesterday i tried to connect the dvi out from the board to the hdmi in my samsung dlp using a generic dvi-hdmi cable. It worked great. i got audio also.. Later i plugged in a powercolor hd2400pro scs3 with the same dvi - hdmi cable to my tv. now i dont get audio through hdmi.. what else should i install? i know the hd2400pro has the hdmi audio. anybody done this before? if i need the dvi-hdmi adapter from ati then how the onboard one works? please help

I believe that Ati deliberately disable their graphics card onboard sound chip. Their Ati dongle has a link between two of the normally unused DVI pins to tell it to turn on. What we need is for someone to cut an ATi dongle open and tell us all what the connection is.

I may be totally wrong!

Picked up an ATI branded 2600 Pro today to finish off my HD HTPC. Prior to this I have been running the onboard video from my Biostar 690G mobo via the HDMI output. Before upgrading the video card I installed my LG purple laser drive yesterday and rented "Next" on HD-DVD. It played OK, even the action scenes were fine, but it took approx. 5 seconds for the frames to sync properly if I skipped chapters.

Now everything is running very smoothly with PDVD (averaging 35% CPU usage) except for one extra on the disc which is skipping and stuttering really badly which doesn't make much sense as it should be far less intensive than the movie. Layer Cake and Blade Runner Final Cut arrive next week on BD and HD-DVD respectively. Looking forward to trying them out.

System:

AMD Athlon X2 4200+
Biostar 690G mobo
2 Gb RAM
Vista Home Premium

Hi HD-fans,

About three weeks ago i've bought the Sapphire HD2600XT-AGP,( i use my htpc both for games and hd-movies) but got all kinds of trouble with the drivers, Catalyst 7.9 untill 7.12 won't work, they gives errors if i test Direct3D with DirectXDiag:
Testresultaten van Direct3D 7: Fout bij stap 8 (Bezig met maken van 3D-apparaat): HRESULT = 0x80004005 (Algemene fout)
Testresultaten van Direct3D 8: Fout bij stap 8 (Bezig met maken van 3D-apparaat): HRESULT = 0x8876086c (Foutcode)
Testresultaten van Direct3D 9: Fout bij stap 8 (Bezig met maken van 3D-apparaat): HRESULT = 0x8876086c (Foutcode)

Only driver 7.7 and 7.8 works if i intall it manualy and force ATI radeon hd2600xt without the agp suffix.
Driver 7.7 gave me better results then 7.8, but stil with 3d errors, including directx7 and wmv9 and BD,hdDVD execeleration won't work either:(
I even tried the driver hack (not the registerhack) on this page with Catalyst 7.12:
http://home.comcast.net/~exdeus/ati-hd2x00/#agp
But same errors with Direct3D-diag.
So now i used the driver hack with 7.7 but same result, 3d works but slow and with errors.
Can i enable the HDmovie execeleration for 7.7 with the registerhack?
What do you suggest?
1] Wait for a better driver from ATI?
2] Return the card and force my money back?

Thanks for replying,
Dereck

Some specs:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-7VAXP with sound onboard
AMD athlon 2700+
2Gb ram
WinXP-SP2
Sapphire HD2600XT

Hi Dereck, I own a Sapphire 2600 XT AGP too. Try the AGP Drivers from the manufacturers, the newest should be available at http://www.visiontek.com/teksupport/drivers/drivers.html. Sapphire and Gecube also offers AGP Drivers.

No Problems here for me, DirectX working, HA working.

If it doesnt't help, the Problem could be your CPU, I guess it doesn't suppoer SSE2? Some wrote that Cyberlink needs a SSE2 supporting CPU....

Hi Dereck, I own a Sapphire 2600 XT AGP too. Try the AGP Drivers from the manufacturers, the newest should be available at http://www.visiontek.com/teksupport/drivers/drivers.html. Sapphire and Gecube also offers AGP Drivers.

No Problems here for me, DirectX working, HA working.

If it doesnt't help, the Problem could be your CPU, I guess it doesn't suppoer SSE2? Some wrote that Cyberlink needs a SSE2 supporting CPU....


I allready tried the Visiontek and Sapphire drivers, same problem, direct3d won't work in Dxdiagnose:(

What do you mean by SSE2 :confused:

Read here http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=12588123#post12588123

and here about the CPUs that support SSE2: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=12607267#post12607267

But this could only be the dxva problem, it has nothing to do with directx.

Did you try to (re)install the actual directx version?

Possible temporary fix for AGP-users with non-SSE2 cpu

Hi!
I've just read the posts about the potential SSE2-problem and did som research and may have found a possible solution (it works for me...).

I myself have an AMD 2500+ XP Barton (non SSE2) and a GeCube 2600 Pro AGP-card and have never got H.264 to work although mpeg2 and VC-1 acceleration works.

I found an interesting post on a forum about nvidias purevideo, and they where doing some testing on the PowerDVD SSE and SSE2 dll-files to see if the h264 acceleration was disabled on a SSE2 cpu when using a SSE dll.

So I thought I would do the same thing as they did. I backuped the 264dsse.dll and replaced the file with the 264dsse2.dll file (in PowerDVD\VideoFilter). So now I got a 264dsse.dll file which is the same file as the 264dsse2.dll.

After that I fired up PowerDVD and to my surprise I now got H.264 acceleration working! No more unticked Avivo-checkbox when loading a h264 clip!
I've tested a H264/AVC BD-movie and some quicktime trailers and they are now fully accelerated!

Edit:
To view the testing results, read here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=12634093#post12634093

Hi!
I've just read the posts about the potential SSE2-problem and did som research and may have found a possible solution (it works for me...).

I myself have an AMD 2500+ XP Barton (non SSE2) and a GeCube 2600 Pro AGP-card and have never got H.264 to work although mpeg2 and VC-1 acceleration works.

I found an interesting post on a forum about nvidias purevideo, and they where doing some testing on the PowerDVD SSE and SSE2 dll-files to see if the h264 acceleration was disabled on a SSE2 cpu when using a SSE dll.

So I thought I would do the same thing as they did. I backuped the 264dsse.dll and replaced the file with the 264dsse2.dll file (in PowerDVD\VideoFilter). So now I got a 264dsse.dll file which is the same file as the 264dsse2.dll.

After that I fired up PowerDVD and to my surprise I now got H.264 acceleration working! No more unticked Avivo-checkbox when loading a h264 clip!
I've tested a H264/AVC BD-movie and some quicktime trailers and they are now fully accelerated!

Edit:
I've done some more testing and this seems to break "software" decoding for the codec inside PowerDVD (because it has loaded a sse2.dll on non sse2 cpu). It also seems to totally break the codec outside of PowerDVD.

I will do some more testing...

So to be clear it works with hardware acceleration in powerdvd but not outside?

I have read many threads of nvidia users with same problem that we, no HA on non-SSE2 CPU systems. I think there is an PowerDvD limitation with non SSE2 Cpu using DVXA but i don't know there is software or Hardware limitations.

Extreacted from Wikipedia:

SSE2, introduced with the Pentium 4, is a major enhancement to SSE (which some programmers renamed "SSE1"). SSE2 adds new math instructions for double-precision (64-bit) floating point and also extends MMX instructions to operate on 128-bit XMM registers. SSE integer instructions introduced with later SSE extensions would still operate on 64-bit MMX registers because the new XMM registers require operating system support. SSE2 enables the programmer to perform SIMD math of virtually any type (from 8-bit integer to 64-bit float) entirely with the XMM vector-register file, without the need to touch the (legacy) MMX/FPU registers. Many programmers consider SSE2 to be "everything SSE should have been", as SSE2 offers an orthogonal set of instructions for dealing with common datatypes.

Regards

This is what I am getting using the DXVA Checker. This is on a MSI 2600XT PCIE and Cat 7-11. Sure don't see much there. Can't quite figure out what this means. Anybody have any ideas?

This is what I am getting using the DXVA Checker. This is on a MSI 2600XT PCIE and Cat 7-11. Sure don't see much there. Can't quite figure out what this means. Anybody have any ideas?

On the second one, the 3Cblahdeblah is vector-adaptive deinterlacing. This only appears under NV12 as that's the colourspace hardware acceleration uses.

If you set auto deinterlacing, a few other modes appear. However, CCC is sometimes a bit stupid with auto, especially with HD h264, and selects bob when it should VA. It's a bit better behaved recently though, with the crisis hotfix drivers (7.11 and a half) and 7.12.

On the second one, the 3Cblahdeblah is vector-adaptive deinterlacing. This only appears under NV12 as that's the colourspace hardware acceleration uses.

If you set auto deinterlacing, a few other modes appear. However, CCC is sometimes a bit stupid with auto, especially with HD h264, and selects bob when it should VA. It's a bit better behaved recently though, with the crisis hotfix drivers (7.11 and a half) and 7.12.

Thanks for the info. I hadn't applied the hotfix because I don't play games. This is my HTPC and I use strictly for that but I am having a lot of issues with de-interlacing and HA. I can't get HA when I play MKV files using MPC with cyberlink h264 decoder. If I use EVR I get a black screen if I use vmr, it plays but I get no HA. I did apply your tweaks but I haven't seen any improvements, I guess I'll just keep reading and tweaking.

Thanks for the info. I hadn't applied the hotfix because I don't play games.

It's not just for games, that's just the principle reason they use for releasing it. Any hotfix has several other bugfixes and features not related to that - for example the crysis drivers are the only ones to have denoise/detail sliders, not even 7.12 has that.

I can't get HA when I play MKV files using MPC with cyberlink h264 decoder. If I use EVR I get a black screen if I use vmr, it plays but I get no HA.

That's a standard problem, everyone has that (including NVidia users). If the encode was made with more than the Bluray/HDDVD standard h264 reference frames then it won't do acceleration - it happens with mkv 1080p since they almost always break this rule, as do most 720p encodes. At present there is no solution, and I'm not optimistic there ever will be, as Cyberlink have no real incentive to fix it.

You get playback in VMR9 because in Vista that doesn't support h264 hardware acceleration, so the problem never arises (EVR is compulsory for Vista h264 acceleration).

So to be clear it works with hardware acceleration in powerdvd but not outside?

I've done some more testing and come up with some strange results.

By doing this I get the following:

In PowerDVD:
- H.264 files that the card can accelerate, it now accelerates fine. (quicktime trailers, BD-movies etc.)
- H.264 files that the card can not accelerate (like most mkv-files), will result in a black screen. I have not tested with a mkv-file that was "encoded" for the ATI-cards so I can't tell if all mkv-files fails or not.

Outside PowerDVD:
(Here comes some strange results...)

In Media Player Classic when using the Cyberlink H.264 codec:
- H.264 files that the card can not accelerate, like before, results in a black screen.
- H.264 files that the card can accelerated, does NOT get accelerated even when I tried different output options etc.
Edit:
- I get H.264 acceleration working when choosing VMR7 as output!

In DVBViewer:
- A terrestrial HD channel, H.264 19Mbit, gets fully accelerated. (Overlay output and Cyberlink codec.)
Edit:
- All H.264 files seems to work and gets accelerated, even mkv-files, although it seems I get the 20 fps-bug.

// Edit: The sentence below is not correct any more.
I tried the same settings in Media Player Classic as in the DVBViewer but I could not get any acceleration on H.264 files... maybe there something I missed.
// End

I haven't tested with another ATI-driver, I'm currently using a 8.40 driver, Windows XP and Cyberlink v.3516.

Edit:
So it seems like H.264 works both in PowerDVD and outside when swapping dll-files for us with a non-sse2 cpu.

It's not just for games, that's just the principle reason they use for releasing it. Any hotfix has several other bugfixes and features not related to that - for example the crysis drivers are the only ones to have denoise/detail sliders, not even 7.12 has that.

I see, I hadn't realized, I guess I better install it. So should I leave the cat 7.11 and just install the hotfix or should I upgrade to 7.12 and then install it or does it take the place of either catalyst drivers. I also been reading about cat 7.7 were working the best. Which ones do you recommend.



That's a standard problem, everyone has that (including NVidia users). If the encode was made with more than the Bluray/HDDVD standard h264 reference frames then it won't do acceleration - it happens with mkv 1080p since they almost always break this rule, as do most 720p encodes. At present there is no solution, and I'm not optimistic there ever will be, as Cyberlink have no real incentive to fix it.

You get playback in VMR9 because in Vista that doesn't support h264 hardware acceleration, so the problem never arises (EVR is compulsory for Vista h264 acceleration).

I see, thanks for the explanation. Now I know why it wouldn't work.

I see, I hadn't realized, I guess I better install it. So should I leave the cat 7.11 and just install the hotfix or should I upgrade to 7.12 and then install it or does it take the place of either catalyst drivers. I also been reading about cat 7.7 were working the best. Which ones do you recommend.

I had some nasty problems getting 7.12 to work, that I'd never seen before - it needed a more exact voltage setting in the bios. Not sure that's typical though.

The crysis hotfix are probably the best drivers out there imo because of the extra sliders, and the fixes compared to 7.11. By the way, it's not a patch as such, it's a full driver package in its own right.

The crysis hotfix are probably the best drivers out there imo because of the extra sliders, and the fixes compared to 7.11.

This is a very odd software development that the hotfix drivers have these sliders and the other one not. Though they have removed this functions or made it unvisible.

Nevertheless, this is a very odd development flow. Normally, all source files are under version control. Functions which are implemented in the source code, are typically not removed. IMO these sliders are still there. Are there any new NAs in the registry of the hotfix drivers?

@Arfster: How did you modded this voltage? I asked this already some posts before. Propably you have not read this...

This is a very odd software development that the hotfix drivers have these sliders and the other one not. Though they have removed this functions or made it unvisible.


Actually, what often happens in software development is that there are branches with different functionalities. Like for example branch for some important customer. Eventually the branches are merged if all goes well.

I have been running 7.12 for a few days now, without VGA BIOS upgrades, and it seems to be the best so far. I'm still using TrDenoise and DXVA_DETAILENHANCE reg tweaks. It does seem to go in judder mode sometimes and occasionally hang completely, but I don't know what part of this belongs to Cyberlink decoders. Restarting my viewing app usually helps, though.

There seems to be a suggestion that the bios should be updated...I have a Powercolor card...and there are not bios updates on their site or the related TUL site that I can find.

I can find bios updates from other vendors for the 2400 Pro. I assume I am asking for trouble if I use those updates. Any opinions?

I'm looking at purchasing a Sony XBR4 and a new home computer. I've heard of compatability problems beteween the XBR4 and nVidia cards. Does anyone know if an XBR4 is compatible with an 256 mb Radeon ATI HD 2600XT card?

The Dell website notes that it has dual DVI outs and also supports HDMI. Since I haven't seen one of these cards, I can't tell exactly what this means. I wonder if it has both an HDMI and a DVI port, with some sort of splitter used to support two DVI devices....

This is working EXACTLY like I want it to. If anyone is looking for the magic Realtek driver that enables the HDMI sound chip on this card, it is here:

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=24&PFid=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false#High%20Definition%20Audio%20Codecs

Note, this is the last driver in the table at the bottom entitled ATI HDMI Audio Device. It's a real shame that ATI couldn't do us the courtesy of posting this driver on their site...

I've added a mention to the sound faq.

if there's any moderators around, could you update the name of this thread to start with 'UPDATED FIRST POST:'

I'm slowly trying to piece together some new info for the first post to turn it into a min-faq, suggestions are welcomed.

p.

protovision, thanks.

Edit: Just FYI, there are two links to the same audio faq post. Feel free to use all of that post directly if you'd rather. I'll keep updating it for the time being if you prefer to leave it. No worries either way.

I've done some more testing and come up with some strange results.

By doing this I get the following:

In PowerDVD:
- H.264 files that the card can accelerate, it now accelerates fine. (quicktime trailers, BD-movies etc.)
- H.264 files that the card can not accelerate (like most mkv-files), will result in a black screen. I have not tested with a mkv-file that was "encoded" for the ATI-cards so I can't tell if all mkv-files fails or not.

Outside PowerDVD:
(Here comes some strange results...)

In Media Player Classic when using the Cyberlink H.264 codec:
- H.264 files that the card can not accelerate, like before, results in a black screen.
- H.264 files that the card can accelerated, does NOT get accelerated even when I tried different output options etc.

In DVBViewer:
- A terrestrial HD channel, H.264 19Mbit, gets fully accelerated. (Overlay output and Cyberlink codec.)
Edit:
- All H.264 files seems to work and gets accelerated, even mkv-files, although it seems I get the 20 fps-bug.

I tried the same settings in Media Player Classic as in the DVBViewer but I could not get any acceleration on H.264 files... maybe there something I missed.

I haven't tested with another ATI-driver, I'm currently using a 8.40 driver, Windows XP and Cyberlink v.3516.

Edit:
So it seems like H.264 works both in PowerDVD and outside when swapping dll-files for us with a non-sse2 cpu.

So you're conclusion is "everything works perfectly when using DVBViewer after the dll swap trick"??

The 20fps bug can probably be fixed using the PS3 fix method, however i need to have acceleration working before i can confirm that.

I've done some more testing and come up with some strange results.

By doing this I get the following:

In PowerDVD:
- H.264 files that the card can accelerate, it now accelerates fine. (quicktime trailers, BD-movies etc.)
- H.264 files that the card can not accelerate (like most mkv-files), will result in a black screen. I have not tested with a mkv-file that was "encoded" for the ATI-cards so I can't tell if all mkv-files fails or not.

Outside PowerDVD:
(Here comes some strange results...)

In Media Player Classic when using the Cyberlink H.264 codec:
- H.264 files that the card can not accelerate, like before, results in a black screen.
- H.264 files that the card can accelerated, does NOT get accelerated even when I tried different output options etc.

In DVBViewer:
- A terrestrial HD channel, H.264 19Mbit, gets fully accelerated. (Overlay output and Cyberlink codec.)
Edit:
- All H.264 files seems to work and gets accelerated, even mkv-files, although it seems I get the 20 fps-bug.

I tried the same settings in Media Player Classic as in the DVBViewer but I could not get any acceleration on H.264 files... maybe there something I missed.

I haven't tested with another ATI-driver, I'm currently using a 8.40 driver, Windows XP and Cyberlink v.3516.

Edit:
So it seems like H.264 works both in PowerDVD and outside when swapping dll-files for us with a non-sse2 cpu.

Truly outstanding work! Since I got two non-sse2 machines I thought I was completely out of luck, but apparently there is still some hope! My non-sse2 boxes consists of an Athlon XP 2000+ and an Athlon XP 2800+. I haven't got the cards yet, but think I'm good to go after your confirmation. Once again, very good work.

I believe that Ati deliberately disable their graphics card onboard sound chip. Their Ati dongle has a link between two of the normally unused DVI pins to tell it to turn on. What we need is for someone to cut an ATi dongle open and tell us all what the connection is.

I may be totally wrong!

This would explain why some people have been able to get audio over standard DVI to HDMI cables and adapters.

Thx. This is the best tweak ever.After replacing those dlls I play with Cyberlink PDVD 7.3 SOME mkv 720p files nice on my slow PC ( Sempron 2200).With CoreAVC were some problems on files with video-bitrate greater than 6000, but with this tweak CPU is on 30-40%.
Very good work done by you.

I'm still fighting my ATI HD2600Pro AGP working correctly in my old P4 Northwood machine, so I'd test this myself if I could, but I can't trust my own results.

So for those "in the know", can you provide your x264 CLI parameters that you use to compress video into MKV containers that work with PowerDVD HA?

I've read that there is a limit on b-frames, adaptive b-frames, and mixed-ref (dunno why on that one). What is the highest you can go and still have it work?

Robert

I have been trying to set up my big screen from my pc with a HD 2400 Pro series video card. I have two results. The Catalyst software runs but won't find the TV or I have no monitor at all. I have looked at the Bios and have set the video setting to PCI E (which is what I have on the motherboard). Nothing seems to get this card to work. I have on board video and uninstalled the driver before booting down. What will make this board work?

Ph00dieman

So you're conclusion is "everything works perfectly when using DVBViewer after the dll swap trick"??

The 20fps bug can probably be fixed using the PS3 fix method, however i need to have acceleration working before i can confirm that.

Yes it works perfectly both in PowerDVD and DVBViewer. I've also got H.264 acceleration working in Media Player Classic now after I choosed VMR7 as output (VMR9 seems to make QT-trailers stutter for me).

I got a hold of an "ATI-friendly" mkv-file and it accelerates fine in PowerDVD, DVBViewer, Media Player Classic and WMP.

"Non ATI-friendly" mkv files produce a black screen in PowerDVD, MPC and WMP. In DVBViewer I get the 20 fps bug instead, which seems a little odd to me.

So my conclusion is that this dll-swap seems to put us non-sse2 agp-users at the same level as the rest of the users...

In my case I can get HDCP content only via switch. If I try to use my projector directly, the HDCP handshake will fail. HDCP implementations are obviously suffering from compatibility issues between different devices.


Well, I purchased an 8600GT and have no HDCP problems. The Asus 2400 Pro either isn't HDCP capable or there is an issue with the drivers.

Btw, for those folks running PCIe versions, the 7.12 drivers seem to work just fine however the "red-shift" problem still occurs unless 3:2 pull-down is disabled! :(

So for those "in the know", can you provide your x264 CLI parameters that you use to compress video into MKV containers that work with PowerDVD HA?

I've read that there is a limit on b-frames, adaptive b-frames, and mixed-ref (dunno why on that one). What is the highest you can go and still have it work?

Robert
Well, I know you've been following my posts (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1081891#post1081891) at Doom9 (I'm UsedUser), but for those that haven't been, it appears that DXVA for AVC is related to a file's compliance with High Profile, Level 4.1. Which, as we discussed here previously, essentially comes down to num_ref_frames < 5 for 1080p or num_ref_frames < 10 for 720p.

In terms of the encoder settings for the best quality, I think you want to give up as few reference frames as possible, while still retaining b-frames. Using b-frame pyramids, at the cost of 2 reference frames, isn't worth it, IMHO.

My recommendations, for DXVA and compliance with other hardware (i.e., the PS3):

1080p or 720p:
Start with the PS3 profile and simply disable B-pyramids. Set your bitrate wherever you want it (default is 1000kbps, which I'm assuming is the max rate for PS3, but doesn't necessarily apply for quality encodes for other purposes).

As a reference point, the Ateme encoder in Nero Digital uses High@L3.1 and a max of 3 ref frames for 720p.

PS3 Profile, no B-pyramids:

--level 4.1 --ref 3 --mixed-refs --bframes 3 --b-rdo --bime --weightb --direct auto --subme 6 --trellis 1 --analyse p8x8,b8x8,i4x4,i8x8 --8x8dct --vbv-maxrate 25000 --me umh --merange 12

Well, I know you've been following my posts (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1081891#post1081891) at Doom9 (I'm UsedUser)

Yep, I have. Glad you got it all worked out! I can start encoding now...

Robert

PreCacher would you mind testing the .dll swap with PowerDVD 7.2 (h264 decoder version 1.99.0.1405). This apparantly fixes the 20fps bug. If this all works then I am definitely getting the HD2600 for my AMD 2000+.

Well, I know you've been following my posts (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1081891#post1081891) at Doom9 (I'm UsedUser), but for those that haven't been, it appears that DXVA for AVC is related to a file's compliance with High Profile, Level 4.1. Which, as we discussed here previously, essentially comes down to num_ref_frames < 5 for 1080p or num_ref_frames < 10 for 720p.



Thanks for the summary - I'm not up to date with encoding these days so it helps.

One little thing: From what I can recall for compliance with 4.1 then numrefframes * framesize +50% must not exceed 12megs. Thus for a 1920*1080 frame, 4 numref, for 720p 9. However, what about encodes in wider aspect ratios where the black bars aren't encoded? (ie 1080p at 2.35 aspect means 1920*827, which would allow 5 numref within the 12meg).

Well, I purchased an 8600GT and have no HDCP problems. The Asus 2400 Pro either isn't HDCP capable or there is an issue with the drivers.

I would say that most likely there is an issue with my projector

Thanks for the summary - I'm not up to date with encoding these days so it helps.

One little thing: From what I can recall for compliance with 4.1 then numrefframes * framesize +50% must not exceed 12megs. Thus for a 1920*1080 frame, 4 numref, for 720p 9. However, what about encodes in wider aspect ratios where the black bars aren't encoded? (ie 1080p at 2.35 aspect means 1920*827, which would allow 5 numref within the 12meg).
I'm currently encoding a clip to test it out, but I'm using 864, as it should be the max mod16 value that would allow num_ref_frames = 5.

1920*1088*4*1.5 = 12,533,760 (12 MB)

12,533,760/(1920*5*1.5) = 870.4

870.4/16 = 54.4

54*16 = 864

So if your hypothesis holds, 5 ref frames should be allowed up to 870.4 lines of resolution.

Unfortunately, my HTPC with the HD2600 went kaput last night, with the smell of something burning. So, not sure when I'll be up and running again.

hope i'll get some help. i'm having a hard time deciding between the 2600xt, 8600gt, and 8600gts. i will be watching 35% 720p/1080i/1080p, 50% DVD, 15% avi files. i would like to know the best overall card for image quality, upconversion, and performance (no stuttering/choppiness). i will never game. my budget is $100, but i could go to $125. i don't know all the best sites, but the following are the 2 best articles i could find.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3047&p=1

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/26/avivo_hd_vs_purevideo/index.html

what makes it confusing is that the more recent article doesn't test the 8600gt (i have no idea if it performs the same as the gts) and both recommend a different card for a non-gamer. btw here are some of my specs:

sony KD30XS955
q6600
2gb ram
vista

I wanted to add an update on my efforts to get DXVA working on my machine.

I've reverted from Vista Ultimate back to XP MCE 2005 to see if that helps.

The results so far:

VC-1: IMAX Blue Planet Blu-ray - approx 10-15% CPU usage when playing. However it STILL stutters.

AVC: Transformers HD-DVD - 100% CPU usage during playback. This also stutters, however, not nearly as badly as the IMAX Blu-ray, and is almost watchable.

In both cases, PowerDVD shows that DXVA is in use.

Oddly, the DXVA Checker utility appears to show that DXVA is enabled for VC-1, but not AVC, so I find it odd that PowerDVD shows it being in use for AVC.

Still using the Cat 7.7 drivers on my Visiontek HD-2400 Pro AGP and ExDeus' reg edits (thanks for those by the way!)

I see no acceleration at all with WMV-HD.

I'm still thinking that once the drivers are corrected, those of us that have AGP flavor cards will have no issues with watching HD on these "older machines", given the 10% CPU usage on the VC-1 content I've used to test. Given that the average bitrates on both the VC-1 IMAX disk and the AVC Transformers disk appeared to be about the same, I would guess that I should see an equal drop in CPU usage once the drivers are fixed on AVC content.

I also noticed that the video looped for the menu on the Transformers disk is VC-1, not AVC, and I see a similar 10-15% CPU usage when it is played.

Let's hope these AGP issues are resolved soon.

I tried a Powercolor 2600XT under Vista x64, and now I get a black screen with PowerDVD Ultra OEM.

With MCE 2005, no desktop appears and the screen stays blank. This is the second ATI card I've tried, with even worse results than the first.

Well I'm another one of the suckers that didnt read the fourms and went out looking for a cheap solution for getting HD on my PC. My 6600GT AGP card isn't compliant and I didn't want to spend a little forunte on upgrading my whole system for a PCI-e 8 series geforce card. So I found the VisionTek 2600pro AGP video card at BestBuy onsale for $99 same as blackfriday. So I then spend the next 2 hours trying to install this seamingly POS videocard when I came accross a post on this very thread which simply suggested I install the lattest drivers from the manufactures website. http://www.visiontek.com/teksupport/...s/drivers.html gees who would have thought lol.

So anyway I after trying the drivers on the CD did not work. I went to ATI's website and downloaded the lattest 7.12 refrence drivers these did not work either. I then found the link that pointed me to Visiontek's drivers and installed those and wala works like a champ. My main reason for getting this card is to watch HD content using AGP. So what I did is hooked up my xbox 360 HD DVD to my PC which is connected to a Sharp x10-x VGA 1280x1024 projector through the DVI-to-VGA converter and powered up Cyberlink's Power DVD with HD support and wala. I've never see such a superb picture. The quality is just amazing. So if your like me and are having ton's of issues installing the drivers just out of the box with the visiontek 2600pro just download the drivers from here:
http://www.visiontek.com/teksupport/...s/drivers.html
and you will be all set.

The picture quality is so good in HD on my projector I have to admit it was worth every penny. A great investment in my book with out having to break the bank or upgrade my whole system. I'm running an Intel 3ghz OC to 3.2 with 1GIG DDR memory on Windows MCE 2005, nothing fancy but HD picture quality is Outstanding through my XBOX HD DVD hooked up to my PC.

I was finally able to confirm that my vt 2400 “xt” AGP card is actually capable of full AVC decode on an old non-sse2 system (Barton@2.1 GHz on a VIA KM400A).

The ripped movie file from Pirates – Black Pearl plays smoothly in Graphedit, in full screen Theater mode with up to 57% CPU uniform (relatively) utilization.

I had what appeared to be some HW acceleration through every step (see below; but never in 1080i), however it was never enough for sub-100% cpu and stutter-free playback. I almost gave up, especially after the nvidia agp/sse2 hwa fiasco of 1-2 years ago. However after replacing 264dsse.dll with the sse2 version, it just worked, with the filters that Graphedit picked up.

System:
Ideq 210V, Athlon XP 2800+, 2GB RAM, LG GGC-H20L through SATA-IDE bridge, 500 GB in SATA RAID 0
Visiontek B2 HD2400 XT AGP (700 MHz/DDR2@400MHz) through RGB and DVI-HDMI to
Vizio P50HDM (native 1366x768) with dual RGB 1024x768 and HDMI 1080i.

WinXP; PDVD 2ch (oem) 3319; (ArcSoft DT2 jp trial crashes; no time for a clean install)
Visiontek Cat 8.43; replaced Cat drivers-only with 7.12; applied all 2400 reg edits; replaced ati3duag.dll only with version 6.14.10.517 (cat 7.8(?)/8.40 beta); replaced 264dsse.dll with 264dsse2.dll.

Playback in Graphedit with MainConcept MPEG Demultiplexer v1.0.47 b60321 (appears to be part of my Hauppauge USB tuner stick software), Cyberlink h264/AVC decoder; DD5.1 audio through SPDIF by Cyberlink Audio Decoder.

I’ll be waiting for ArcSoft now, in the meantime devouring the HD/BD in MPC thread.

Many thanks to all who contributed the tweaks. I hope this is of some help and reassuarance to those who like me cannot justify the upgrade for the only purpose of HD luxury.

Roussi

I have a 34 inch crt and my 2600xt refresh rate is 60hz, will it be any better if I change it to 72hz for hd movies?

I have a 34 inch crt and my 2600xt refresh rate is 60hz, will it be any better if I change it to 72hz for hd movies?

As far as i understand this actually depends on the video file you're playing.

For Pal for example its better to use 50hz. (and for ntsc 60hz i think.)

Setting the number of hz to high can cause your video to stutter.
Setting the number to low can cause video and audio syncing problems in some playback programs (mediaportall for example).

This is part one of my hardware acceleration for media files guide.

This first part will explain:
How to get Hardware acceration (3D, Dxva 1 and 2 and HW deinterlacing) working on any ati radeon card except the Radeon 7k, 8k, 9k-9250 Series.

first install the driver, the omega drivers have been preconfigured to work on every card, they also have built in fixes for agp users, so these are the only drivers i can recommend:
http://www.omegadrivers.net/ati_winxp.php

currently these are the 7.12 drivers, ATI has bene focusing most of its attention at fixing AVIVO issues, the crysis hotfix drivers which are a few days newer have even more fixes (like better VC1 decoding) i think both the 8.1 and the 8.2 drivers will gives a lot more enhancements on the AVIVO area. Omega drivers will be updated accordingly.

After you finish installing the drivers AGP users will need to perform the following step:(PCI-E users can skip this part)

Reboot into safe mode, and then copy
C:\Program Files\Radeon Omega Drivers\v4.8.442\2KXP_INF\AGP\ati3duag.dll
TO
C:\WINDOWS\system32\

And overwrite the file, doing this fixes directX/

-------------------------

At this point the system is fully Hardware accelerated.

The next step is choosing a hardware accelerated player, the answer is pretty simple, Cyberlink has been working together with ATI ever since they invented AVIVO, so its obvious that PowerDVD will get the most out of an ATI card (DXVA is limited so some hardware support has to be manually added, not all programs have these manual addons)

If you have a CPU supporting SSE2 all you will need to do is install the latest version of powerdvd, however if you have a SSE or older computer you will have to do the following trick:

For SSE computers:

In the folder:
C:\Program Files\CyberLink\PowerDVD\VideoFilter
Rename 264dsse.dll to 264dsse.dll.old
Rename 264dsse2.dll to 264dsse.dll

For MMX computers(untested)

In the folder:
C:\Program Files\CyberLink\PowerDVD\VideoFilter
Rename 264dmmx.dll to 264dmmx.dll.old
Rename 264dsse2.dll to 264dmmx.dll




-------------------------

At this point everyone should have hardware acceleration within the PowerDVD program, no matter what your videocard, bus type or processor.

NOTE: Not all cards have the same level of hardware acceleration, please check your manual to see what you card can do.

For HD2400/2600 users all AVIVIO HD functions can be enabled using this tool: http://exdeus.home.comcast.net/~exdeus/ati-hd2x00/

The Next part of the guide will be Accelerating x264 files, in bith 720p and 1080p. That guide will also (if needed/possible) include information on how to fix existing files to prevent the black screen and 20fps bugs.

Excellent guide. Hopefully this can be added to the info on the first page of the thread to help those who might have just gotten one of these cards and is still wondering why DXVA doesn't work... Saving them our headaches!

Also, looking forward to the x264 stuff for myself, since I haven't been able to do anythng with that yet.

Question what's the easiest way to determine if HA is actually working? Would I just open up task manager and see if CPU is @100% during playback? Or is there some utility I can download. I was watching King Kong last night and it played fine the parts that I watched. What should I be looking for? I want to apply the tweaks if I need them. I'm just not in the habit of fixing something that isnt broken. Should I run DirectX test to verify If Im having a problem with Directx? Sorry for the noob questions. I want to make sure I set this up right. I have an AGP VT ATI HD2600Pro 512ram

Will the omega drivers work with MS MCE2005? Or just XP? I'm running MCE2005



At this point everyone should have hardware acceleration within the PowerDVD program, no matter what your videocard, bus type or processor.

NOTE: Not all cards have the same level of hardware acceleration, please check your manual to see what you card can do.

The Next part of the guide will be Accelerating x264 files, in bith 720p and 1080p. That guide will also (if needed/possible) include information on how to fix existing files to prevent the black screen and 20fps bugs.

Tetsuo55, that's meant as a joke, right? If you have a CPU that's old enough not to use SSE2 you will have a very nice slide show of any HD content worthy of being called HD anyway! Stuff you can watch will probably be of lesser image quality than regular DVD, and what's the point then?

I'm serious

HD is almost watchable on my system, it just needs a little help from the videocard

Content up to 720p plays flawlessly but anything higher starts to drop frames and starts to stutter, VC1 and mpeg2 are watchable but h264 is a stutterfest

Thats why i bought the ati card, so it could fill in the gaps, with the ati's hardware accelaration i should have 0 framedrops on 1080p with about 40-60% cpu usuage

Incredible! I have a bunch of old XP2600-XP2800 CPU's and motherboards laying around the house. Maybe I should try to sell them as "HD capable"? ;)

Edit: No, wait! I'll do what flat TV manufacturers has gotten away with for a couple of years: "HD Ready"!

Yeah,

starting from the athlonXP 2500+ any hdready content is playable without videocard assistance

So 720P MKV video is fully playable, MPEG2 is in my case playable in 1080p, 1080i can be done, but with a quick deinterlacing algorythm that will cause jaggies

Thats great tetsuo55! If you can play 720p and all you have to do is add a inexpensive video card for 1080p then thats great news for some people that have old equipment. Since I use an OLD outdated Athlon 64 X2 4200+, 2Gig mem and 2600 512 Pro as my HTPC, I would love to dig out my older AMD Athlon XP 2200+ processor and MB and use that for my HTPC. Now were talking GREEN. It's a shame when some people think you need the latest hardware to run HD content and blast you when you can get away with running older technology. My hats off to those that do.:) PS: I use my video card for the HDMI interface on the Sony KDF-46E2000 via the ATI adapter and Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Keyboard and Mouse 7000. Nice neat package.

This may be a little late in the thread, but I also wanted to confirm that I have no issues playing MKV 720p files on an older (non SSE2) system without using any GPU hardware acceleration features.

GFX card is a 7800 GS, but I doubt it's helping out at all. ;)
CPU is a Athlon XP 2700+ (333 MHz FSB).
System has 1.5 GB of RAM.
Running Windows XP Pro SP2.

I'm playing them with media player classic or VLC. 1080p plays, but there is noticeable stutter and it's not watchable. CPU usage for the 720p files hovers anywhere between 50-80%.

Just thought I'd pitch in some input into this massive thread. I too was looking for a cheap AGP upgrade to playback 1080p (mostly hoping for MKV files) on my old HTPC. Looks like I'll stick with my 720p for now and wait for this hardware acceleration stuff to get worked out.

Excellent work and feedback by so many people, I just wanted to say thanks for all the time you've all spent on this!

This is part one of my hardware acceleration for media files guide.

This first part will explain:
How to get Hardware acceration (3D, Dxva 1 and 2 and HW deinterlacing) working on any ati radeon card except the Radeon 7k, 8k, 9k-9250 Series.

first install the driver, the omega drivers have been preconfigured to work on every card, they also have built in fixes for agp users, so these are the only drivers i can recommend:
http://www.omegadrivers.net/ati_winxp.php

currently these are the 7.12 drivers, ATI has bene focusing most of its attention at fixing AVIVO issues, the crysis hotfix drivers which are a few days newer have even more fixes (like better VC1 decoding) i think both the 8.1 and the 8.2 drivers will gives a lot more enhancements on the AVIVO area. Omega drivers will be updated accordingly.

After you finish installing the drivers AGP users will need to perform the following step:(PCI-E users can skip this part)

Reboot into safe mode, and then copy
C:\Program Files\Radeon Omega Drivers\v4.8.442\2KXP_INF\AGP\ati3duag.dll
TO
C:\WINDOWS\system32\

And overwrite the file, doing this fixes directX/

-------------------------

At this point the system is fully Hardware accelerated.

The next step is choosing a hardware accelerated player, the answer is pretty simple, Cyberlink has been working together with ATI ever since they invented AVIVO, so its obvious that PowerDVD will get the most out of an ATI card (DXVA is limited so some hardware support has to be manually added, not all programs have these manual addons)

If you have a CPU supporting SSE2 all you will need to do is install the latest version of powerdvd, however if you have a SSE or older computer you will have to do the following trick:

For SSE computers:

In the folder:
C:\Program Files\CyberLink\PowerDVD\VideoFilter
Rename 264dss.dll to 264dss.dll.old
Rename 264dss2.dll to 264dss.dll

For MMX computers(untested)

In the folder:
C:\Program Files\CyberLink\PowerDVD\VideoFilter
Rename 264dmmx.dll to 264dmmx.dll.old
Rename 264dss2.dll to 264dmmx.dll




-------------------------

At this point everyone should have hardware acceleration within the PowerDVD program, no matter what your videocard, bus type or processor.

NOTE: Not all cards have the same level of hardware acceleration, please check your manual to see what you card can do.

The Next part of the guide will be Accelerating x264 files, in bith 720p and 1080p. That guide will also (if needed/possible) include information on how to fix existing files to prevent the black screen and 20fps bugs.

I only care about MPEG2 acceleration. Does this proivide flawless MPEG2 playback? Should I still run exduex' registry tweaks for color and denoise etc...?

This is part one of my hardware acceleration for media files guide.



Thanks for the guide. I just went through all the steps but I still seem to be getting no playback (black screen) using the cyberlink avc decoder in media player classic when I tried a supposedly properly encoded h.264 1080p file.

I've got a visiontek radeon 2400 pro, SSE cpu (xp 2400) on an AGP system so I pretty much had to do all the mods. It works fine for 720p mkv files using coreavc.

I also installed the latest power dvd player (7.3.3516). I wasn't able to find the 264dss2.dll file. It did have 264dsse2.dll (along with 264dsse2.dll.0 ... 264dsse2.dll.3), so I renamed it to 264dsse.dll.

Still waiting for the h.264 playback guide to confirm if I can get HWA on my system.

Thanks for the guide. I just went through all the steps but I still seem to be getting no playback (black screen) using the cyberlink avc decoder in media player classic when I tried a supposedly properly encoded h.264 1080p file.

I've got a visiontek radeon 2400 pro, SSE cpu (xp 2400) on an AGP system so I pretty much had to do all the mods. It works fine for 720p mkv files using coreavc.

I also installed the latest power dvd player (7.3.3516). I wasn't able to find the 264dss2.dll file. It did have 264dsse2.dll (along with 264dsse2.dll.0 ... 264dsse2.dll.3), so I renamed it to 264dsse.dll.

Still waiting for the h.264 playback guide to confirm if I can get HWA on my system.

Just a quick update... the step to copy 264sse2.dll to 264sse.dll is the one causing the black screen for me. Fixing that however brings it back to the previous state where playback using the cyberlink decoder stutters a bit compared to coreavc for 720p video.

The card has 2 components important here:

UVD: does h264 and VC1 acceleration, so the CPU is doing pretty much nothing

Shaders: do mpeg2 acceleration (not full, roughly halfs CPU usage), and deinterlacing, scaling, denoising, sharpening, etc.

thank, you arfster.
I know you people are on the "state of the art" issues, but i´m a beginer and need your expertise in "htpc newbies" questions:
I decided to go for a AMD 4800+ dualcore + Sapphire 2600 pro PCIe 256Mb and XP. I will have the pc tomorrow. I have a DLP SP7210 720p projector.
I will play internet 720p /1080p files until I buy a xBox hd dvd.
I know I need a player, a decoder and may be a filter for SD DVD. It came to my mind what is using a friend of mine having a Nvidia 7600GT:Zoomplayer, Purevideo, FFdshow.
What is the best suite for this gpu? I mean, what player, decoder, filter do I need to install in order to get the best of my gpu and do what you mention on my first question.
I´ve read PDVD ultra is the only for the HW aceleration, sth that is made for and Ati card. what is the key of HW aceleration? Better PQ or less CPU usage only? Do I need HW aceleration??
Nvidia purevideo is a software decoder, and the Avivo..is Hardware decoder? do I get similar output?
Do I need to install the registry tweak http://exdeus.home.comcast.net/~exdeus/ati-hd2x00/
and the most important problems I´ve read on this thead will be solved? Or shold I install tetsuo55 driver? http://www.omegadrivers.net/ati_winxp.php
Or sth else?
thanks

Sorry for the newbie question but how do you tell if HWA is working. I'm running a VT ATI AGP 2600Pro Is there an easy way to tell if HWA is working? I see about 70-80CPU utilization while playing KingKong in HD through PowerDVD Ultra

I purchased a Radeon 2400 HD and installed it in my Vista machine. I purchased a generic HDMI cable from Target. I am using a Mitsubishi 65" rear projection tv with 1080p capability as my monitor.

After installing and connecting everything, the picture came in fine and looked quite good. Some of the more advanced desktop themes were unavailable because I was still using the default Vista display adapter. After installing the Radeon adapter, or Catalyst software, I could no longer pick up a signal past the post messages when booting.

If I disable the Radeon adapter through the device manager, or boot to safe mode, the picture is again restored. If I reenable it, the picture is lost. For testing purposes I connected a 17" CRT monitor (vga connection) along with my HDTV and I have no problems getting a signal to the CRT monitor with the Radeon adapter enabled, although it still will not display on my HDTV.

Question what's the easiest way to determine if HA is actually working? Would I just open up task manager and see if CPU is @100% during playback? Or is there some utility I can download. I was watching King Kong last night and it played fine the parts that I watched. What should I be looking for? I want to apply the tweaks if I need them. I'm just not in the habit of fixing something that isnt broken. Should I run DirectX test to verify If Im having a problem with Directx? Sorry for the noob questions. I want to make sure I set this up right. I have an AGP VT ATI HD2600Pro 512ram

Will the omega drivers work with MS MCE2005? Or just XP? I'm running MCE2005

I recommend the tweaks to every 2400/2600 user, i added them to the guide, these drivers wil work on everythig except vista and 64bit

I only care about MPEG2 acceleration. Does this proivide flawless MPEG2 playback? Should I still run exduex' registry tweaks for color and denoise etc...?

the guide works for everything, so also mpeg2, you probably will need the exdeus patches, i added them to the guide, note however that i only testes SD mpeg2(DVD) myself, its fully accelerated

Thanks for the guide. I just went through all the steps but I still seem to be getting no playback (black screen) using the cyberlink avc decoder in media player classic when I tried a supposedly properly encoded h.264 1080p file.

I've got a visiontek radeon 2400 pro, SSE cpu (xp 2400) on an AGP system so I pretty much had to do all the mods. It works fine for 720p mkv files using coreavc.

I also installed the latest power dvd player (7.3.3516). I wasn't able to find the 264dss2.dll file. It did have 264dsse2.dll (along with 264dsse2.dll.0 ... 264dsse2.dll.3), so I renamed it to 264dsse.dll.

Still waiting for the h.264 playback guide to confirm if I can get HWA on my system.
Just a quick update... the step to copy 264sse2.dll to 264sse.dll is the one causing the black screen for me. Fixing that however brings it back to the previous state where playback using the cyberlink decoder stutters a bit compared to coreavc for 720p video.

A that must be a typo in my guide fixed it, the reason it doesnt work for you is that you A need to apply the exdeus patches, and B ned to make sure its a DXVA freindly file, i did all my tests with hddvd's and blurays, nothing confirmed for mkv yet

Sorry for the newbie question but how do you tell if HWA is working. I'm running a VT ATI AGP 2600Pro Is there an easy way to tell if HWA is working? I see about 70-80CPU utilization while playing KingKong in HD through PowerDVD Ultra

To see if DXVA is working, play the video in powerdvd, go to options while it playing, then to tab information, you should see the following info:

Display Information:
FourCC Code: NV12
Surface Type: Hardware Video Accelerator (DxVA)

Hardware Information:
Video Accelerator: DirectX VA (in use)

Besides this your cpu usage should be low, and the image shoud be stutterfree, (unless you have a 1ghz or slower cpu i guess, someone will have to confirm how slow you can go with the cpu)

thank, you arfster.
I know you people are on the "state of the art" issues, but i´m a beginer and need your expertise in "htpc newbies" questions:
I decided to go for a AMD 4800+ dualcore + Sapphire 2600 pro PCIe 256Mb and XP. I will have the pc tomorrow. I have a DLP SP7210 720p projector.
I will play internet 720p /1080p files until I buy a xBox hd dvd.
I know I need a player, a decoder and may be a filter for SD DVD. It came to my mind what is using a friend of mine having a Nvidia 7600GT:Zoomplayer, Purevideo, FFdshow.
What is the best suite for this gpu? I mean, what player, decoder, filter do I need to install in order to get the best of my gpu and do what you mention on my first question.
I´ve read PDVD ultra is the only for the HW aceleration, sth that is made for and Ati card. what is the key of HW aceleration? Better PQ or less CPU usage only? Do I need HW aceleration??
Nvidia purevideo is a software decoder, and the Avivo..is Hardware decoder? do I get similar output?
Do I need to install the registry tweak http://exdeus.home.comcast.net/~exdeus/ati-hd2x00/
and the most important problems I´ve read on this thead will be solved? Or shold I install tetsuo55 driver? http://www.omegadrivers.net/ati_winxp.php
Or sth else?
thanks

Follow my guide and everything should be fine, with your cpu you will not "Need" HW acceleration for those 720p/1080p mkv's or dvd's, you will be needing it for original hddvd's though

How to get Hardware acceration (3D, Dxva 1 and 2 and HW deinterlacing) working on any ati radeon card except the Radeon 7k, 8k, 9k-9250 Series.

-------------------------

At this point the system is fully Hardware accelerated.
Keep in mind that there are a host of different issues depending on the card being used.

I had the HD2600PRO AGP on an Athlon 64 3400+. I had DXVA working with all of the x264 encodes complying with High Profile @ L4.1.

Then, as I mentioned, that system went up in smoke.

I built a new Athlon 64 X2 4400+, and while I wait for my HD2600PRO PCIe to arrive, I'm running an X1600XT.

With a clean driver install, and even with the HD2x00 reg tweaks applied (just for kicks), this card is not providing DXVA for H264, despite that fact that it advertises "Accelerated MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMV9, VC-1, and H.264 decoding and transcoding" and "DXVA support".

When I check the Cyberlink decoder output, instead of "DXVA 1920X1080" or "DXVA 1280X720", I get "YUV 768X480" for both formats.

So, I don't really know anything about the X1600XT as far as DXVA goes, as I hadn't tried it before, but I do know that DXVA isn't as cut-and-dried for different cards as your guide might lead one to expect.

If anyone knows anything about why the Cyberlink decoder is downrezzing everything on the X1600XT, feel free to chime in.

Thanks for the feedback, my guide has only been tested on a 9600XT and a HD2400pro, so any tests on other cards are welcome, however other people have used the driver and ati.dll trick to get gaming to work on all kinds of ati cards


You're problem is 2 fold

The X1600XT can only accelerate streams up to 720p, anything higher will default to software decoding.

It seems powerdvd is downsizing your videostreams, this is either a setting you (accidently) set in the powerDVD options, or there is something wrong with the settings of your system and PowerDVD is enforcing the hd rules by downsizing the image to SD standard


You can still confirm DXVA by using the DXdiag.exe to test direct3D, and running a regular DVD with DXVA enabled in PowerDVD

Follow my guide and everything should be fine, with your cpu you will not "Need" HW acceleration for those 720p/1080p mkv's or dvd's, you will be needing it for original hddvd's though

ok, so can I wait for your update when I´ll get the x box hd dvd drive or is a MUST to install it?:)
The Exdeus Reg teak is a MUST instead of having a 4800+ cpu? Or it not only correct hw issues but also Post-procesing issues?
What about the players? Are you using PDVD?...Zoomplayer and ffdshow team?..other Decoders?
Your comments will be much appreciated.

1, You do not need to card for MKV's
2, The reg tweaks only apply to the HD2x00 cards
3, I only use PowerDVD at the moment because it's the only program where everything (except mkv) works

Everything that does not work in PowerDVD i run in Media Player classic installed with the k-lite mega codecpack

Thank you, man

A that must be a typo in my guide fixed it, the reason it doesnt work for you is that you A need to apply the exdeus patches, and B ned to make sure its a DXVA freindly file, i did all my tests with hddvd's and blurays, nothing confirmed for mkv yet


I've got the exdeus patches installed and tried the demos on h264info.com/clips.html. I am assuming they aren't DXVA friendly.

Those files you linked to are definately incompatible from what i read on the site

definately looking forward to part two

I was using the onboard gfx on my gigabyte 690g based board and everything was playing fine using ffdshow or haali/core avc

I decided to get a 2600xt yesterday to improve cpu usage and obviosuly ran into the problem everyone else has regarding not being able to get hardware acceleration going.

I installed powerdvd and while I can get hardware acceleration on a few h264 .mkv's and .ts, the majority don't work.

I unregistered the powerdvd codec and went back to coreavc and all work again but nothing now works in powerdvd.

Is there anyway to set up powerdvd for hd-dvd/blu ray playback while retaining coreavc for .mkv's etc without running a .bat everytime?

Is there anyway to set up powerdvd for hd-dvd/blu ray playback while retaining coreavc for .mkv's etc without running a .bat everytime?

I am not sure what player you use for .mkv files but with media player classic you don't need a batch file to register/unregister codecs. In MPC you can simply force it to use coreavc instead of the cyberlink avc codec without affecting powerdvd.

Just tell mediaplayer classic to use "prefer" CoreAVC in the external filters settings.

Also as far as i see your 680G onboard videocard should have full support for DXVA?

Hi,

I'm looking to get a 2600XT PCIe for my HTPC, which currently is using the on board Nvidia 6150 video. That card has problems (at least for me) with 1080i, and even with 720p I am getting a large amount of dropped frames (VMR9 in MyTheatre, DVB-S).

I'm using a Panasonic TH-50PZ77 TV (50" 1080p 60Hz). From looking at the specs of the 2600 cards, they only output 1080i. According to the gigabyte manual hxxp://america.giga-byte.com/FileList/Manual/vga_manual_gv-rx26t256h_e.pdf the supported 1080 resolutions are:

1920 x 1080 @75Hz for "flat panel" display
and
1080i 1920 x 1080 @30Hz for HDTV display

I'm a little confused on how these resolutions related to the native 1080p 60hz resolution of my display. Will I be able to set a custom resolution for the 1080p 60Hz Panasonic display? Or will I have to feed the display a 1080i feed if I use this card?

Thanks
Greg.

I am not sure what player you use for .mkv files but with media player classic you don't need a batch file to register/unregister codecs. In MPC you can simply force it to use coreavc instead of the cyberlink avc codec without affecting powerdvd.

I have looked at mpc and kmplayer with the specified codec options but before putting powerdvd in I was just viewing them through media centre (usind haali and coreavc)

Also as far as i see your 680G onboard videocard should have full support for DXVA?

I knew that but I thought it was already giving the acceleration on mkv's before I waded through this thread.

The review at toms hardware where they compare image quality and cpu usage for hddvd and blu ray h264 and vc1 convinced me I needed another card. i ddin't realise it would be pretty much useless for mkv's - so far.

I'm using a Panasonic TH-50PZ77 TV (50" 1080p 60Hz). From looking at the specs of the 2600 cards, they only output 1080i.

All graphics cards output progressive - interlaced is much trickier to do.

720p mkv 20fps bug fix, well working for me

I have tried this on 3 of my x264 encoded 720p HD movies and it removes the 20 fps slow down. I have tried this method to try and fix 1080p movies and it doesn't work. This is for 720p movies only. I haven't tried lower resolutions.

Firstly you need to download the following programs.

MKVtoolnix (http://www.videohelp.com/tools/MKVtoolnix)
MKVExtractGui (http://www.videohelp.com/tools/MKVExtractGUI)
H264info (https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=138139&package_id=225029)

MKVGuiExtract files need to go into the program directory of MKVToolnix to work.

Once all three are installed

Open your MKV/AVI with MKV Gui Extract. Extract all the streams you need(all will be remuxed later) i.e. Audio, Subs etc.

Once all are extracted open H264info.

Input = Extracted H264/AVC Stream
Output = (Insert Name).h264

In the "For 23.976 -> 59.94 Frame Tripling/Doubling alternating (for 720p, 480p)" Box put in

4.2

now click Start. Wait several minutes.

Now Open MKVToolnix --> MKV Merge GUI

Add your New H264 stream with the audio streams etc you extracted earlier.
Click on the H264 stream and click format specific options.
Put in the frame rate of the H264 stream, mine have all been 23.975986 (you can find this out if you download avinaptic and look at the original mkv)
Input your new Output Filename and click Start Muxing.

If this doesn't work on all your movies then I appologise however I have tried this on 3 now and its removed the problem on all 3.

DjBLu: could you try running the extracted h264 video alone? If that works, the problem seems to be with Haali splitter.

DjBLu: could you try running the extracted h264 video alone? If that works, the problem seems to be with Haali splitter.

Have done and its the H264 stream that is causing the problem.

Have done and its the H264 stream that is causing the problem.

Yeah, seems the same for me. Muxxed one troublesome 720p mkv using your method, and it works :-) Will try others later.

If this does work, it should prove easy to do a little batch file for this, so you could set the computer to fix all your mkvs overnight.


Edit: done four 720p mkvs that won't play normally, now they all do. Nice find!

A little tip: To avoid audio and video sync problems, you can also use the two TimeCode text files, created by MKV Extract, when using MKV Merge in the final stage...

In the "For 23.976 -> 59.94 Frame Tripling/Doubling alternating (for 720p, 480p)" Box put in

4.2
I believe that's the "Level (1 - 5.1)" box where you enter the level. The label is on the right, not the left. Those are notes applying to the "3:2 Pulldown" checkbox above it.

I'm testing using 4.1, since that's the level we should be shooting for, for DXVA.

Thanks for the find. I'll report back with my results on forcing L4.1 for both L4.1-compliant streams and non-L4.1-compliant streams.

Also, "23.975986" appears to be very accurate, but the actual framerate should be 24000/1001, which is one of the default options in the mkvmerge GUI. That's the framerate you get when you take 24fps film, make a 30000/1001 (29.97fps) HD/DVD/BD via telecine, and then use inverse telecine to get back to 24000/1001 (23.98fps). If AVInaptic or some other tool tells you the framerate is "23.975986", you really want 24000/1001.

I deleted the nVidia drivers on my MCE 2005 installation, and deleted and reinstalled PowerDVD Ultra. Now I get excellent-quality playback of Blu-ray and HD-DVD.

That fix didn't work in Vista Home Premium x64, however. At least I am back in the HDM game; glad I had a backup!

Is it possible to put together a quick-reference troubleshooting guide so that others don't have to go through all this trouble?

720p mkv 20fps bug fix, well working for me

I have tried this on 3 of my x264 encoded 720p HD movies and it removes the 20 fps slow down. I have tried this method to try and fix 1080p movies and it doesn't work. This is for 720p movies only. I haven't tried lower resolutions.

Firstly you need to download the following programs.

MKVtoolnix (http://www.videohelp.com/tools/MKVtoolnix)
MKVExtractGui (http://www.videohelp.com/tools/MKVExtractGUI)
H264info (https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=138139&package_id=225029)

MKVGuiExtract files need to go into the program directory of MKVToolnix to work.

Once all three are installed

Open your MKV/AVI with MKV Gui Extract. Extract all the streams you need(all will be remuxed later) i.e. Audio, Subs etc.

Once all are extracted open H264info.

Input = Extracted H264/AVC Stream
Output = (Insert Name).h264

In the "For 23.976 -> 59.94 Frame Tripling/Doubling alternating (for 720p, 480p)" Box put in

4.2

now click Start. Wait several minutes.

Now Open MKVToolnix --> MKV Merge GUI

Add your New H264 stream with the audio streams etc you extracted earlier.
Click on the H264 stream and click format specific options.
Put in the frame rate of the H264 stream, mine have all been 23.975986 (you can find this out if you download avinaptic and look at the original mkv)
Input your new Output Filename and click Start Muxing.

If this doesn't work on all your movies then I appologise however I have tried this on 3 now and its removed the problem on all 3.


i am familiar with this method, basically what it does is change the header of the h264 packets to 4.1 instead of what they where (probably 5.1)

What this means is that its still a 5.1 encode with all the b-frames and other wierd crap that was a possiible suspect

Can you try to input 5.1 instead of 4. and see if the file works? if it does then we have found the problem (corrupt packet creation by x264)

If it doesn't work with 5.1 then its an issue with the cyberlink decoder, it probably assumes some things when 5.1 is chosen which breaks compatibility

@arfster

Just to follow up, the streams I encoded at 1920x864 and 1920x816 with 5 reference frames played successfully with DXVA.

So, without the added 50% you mentioned to make it 12MB, the following formula just needs to hold true:

Height * Width * num_ref_frames <= 8294400


Interestingly, if you are close to the limit, i.e., 1920x880 and num_ref_frames = 5, which should be 16 more lines of resolution than are allowed with 5 reference frames, DXVA will still work, but there is decoder corruption. The picture breaks up and there's what looks like macroblocking with corrupt blocks --- what it often looks like when TS packets are lost during a terrestrial broadcast.

Hi,
i have the PowerColor Radeon HD2400Pro SCS PCIe Card and it won't let to install the ATI 7.12 drivers.
7.11 installation is fine. PowerColor site has only the 7.10 for download.
Is it worth to install 7.12 ?
Need to modify .inf files (how/which) ?

Thanks

i am familiar with this method, basically what it does is change the header of the h264 packets to 4.1 instead of what they where (probably 5.1)

What this means is that its still a 5.1 encode with all the b-frames and other wierd crap that was a possiible suspect

Can you try to input 5.1 instead of 4. and see if the file works? if it does then we have found the problem (corrupt packet creation by x264)

If it doesn't work with 5.1 then its an issue with the cyberlink decoder, it probably assumes some things when 5.1 is chosen which breaks compatibility
To my knowledge, the profile levels don't allow any additional features (i.e., things relating to b-frames), it's simply about the allowable framebuffer, which we've established has to comply with L4.1 for DXVA.

With all the testing we've been doing, I think it's clear that the stuttering/20fps isn't simply a matter of packet corruption by the x264 encoder. If the encoder sets the profile to High@L4.1, there are no issues. I suppose it's possible that x264 writes some corrupt packet information only if the level is set to 5.1 or "unrestricted", so I will test some identical encoder settings @ L4.1, L5.1 and Unrestricted and see what happens.

To my knowledge, the profile levels don't allow any additional features (i.e., things relating to b-frames), it's simply about the allowable framebuffer, which we've established has to comply with L4.1 for DXVA.

With all the testing we've been doing, I think it's clear that the stuttering/20fps isn't simply a matter of packet corruption by the x264 encoder. If the encoder sets the profile to High@L4.1, there are no issues. I suppose it's possible that x264 writes some corrupt packet information only if the level is set to 5.1 or "unrestricted", so I will test some identical encoder settings @ L4.1, L5.1 and Unrestricted and see what happens.

So what is being said here is the framebuffer in dxva needs to be increased? If so is this something that microsoft needs to address?

Cyberlink have gotten lazy and are making assumsions that profiles are going to break the dxva framebuffer size?

@arfster

Just to follow up, the streams I encoded at 1920x864 and 1920x816 with 5 reference frames played successfully with DXVA.

So, without the added 50% you mentioned to make it 12MB, the following formula just needs to hold true:

Height * Width * num_ref_frames <= 8294400



Ahh, good stuff, thanks. So that means 1080p 2:35 aspect can be done with 5 ref frames - that's not so restrictive (except perhaps for anime?). Did you try anything with exactly 8294400? That's bang on 1920*1080*4.....

To my knowledge, the profile levels don't allow any additional features (i.e., things relating to b-frames), it's simply about the allowable framebuffer, which we've established has to comply with L4.1 for DXVA.

With all the testing we've been doing, I think it's clear that the stuttering/20fps isn't simply a matter of packet corruption by the x264 encoder. If the encoder sets the profile to High@L4.1, there are no issues. I suppose it's possible that x264 writes some corrupt packet information only if the level is set to 5.1 or "unrestricted", so I will test some identical encoder settings @ L4.1, L5.1 and Unrestricted and see what happens.

Thanks for testing, iwil await the results.

Just to be clear, the method to used to fix the 20fps only changes the h264 headers, simply hex editing the first frame will already fix the 20fps bug, the same goes for ps3 users, it now seems quite obvious that the header is causing the problems, the movie itself remains encoded in 5.1 its just that the decoder thinks its 4.1

the only question left is, is the header broken by x264 or does the decoder treat 4,1 differently from 5.1

What this also seems to imply is that we can probably keep using 5.1 and lots of b frames and pyramids, all that needs to be done is adjust the header back to 4.1 and it will work, however a lot more testing is needed

I Just found out that dxva for hd-dvd, br and live hdtv does not work when resolution is set to 1920x1080 !
It did work with my PJ Z4 (720p) and it still works on my dell lcd (1280x1024)
but not on my new baby Sanyo Z2000 when resolution is set to 1080p (720p works).
Card is a MSI 2600 pro AGP.
Driver ist Cat 7.12

Anyone else or am I doing something wrong ?

regards,

mike

OK - I have a question for those of you working on the Matrovska files... I've downloaded the tools and edited the files as the guide shows, however, I'm still not seeing any DXVA when playing them in MPC using the Cyberlink decoder - CPU usage spikes at 100% and the video stutters horribly.

Out of curiousity, I tried just playing the .H264 video file in PowerDVD and MPC, and it appears DXVA works just fine with the video - I get CPU usage at about 10% - 15% even in high bitrate portions of the video in both PowerDVD and MPC. However, both the original MKV and the remuxed MKV spike the usage.

Obviously the video can be accelerated. Is there anything else I need to be doing to get this to happen? Do I need to be changing some settings for Haali or something? Or perhaps I need to somehow edit the filters in MPC? Any suggestions?


EDIT - Nevermind - I got it fixed.... Just had to play with MPC's settings...

All graphics cards output progressive - interlaced is much trickier to do.

Thanks. I bought a Asus EAH2600XT. First thing I noticed, compared to the on board Nvidia 6150 graphics card, is that I can view the bios screen over DVI. Previously I had to unhook the DVI to HDMI cable, switch the TV to the S-video input and view the bois from there. If I left the DVI cable hooked up I couldn't see the bois screen on any of the motherboards video outputs.

I Installed .net 3.0 (I think I read to do that here), then the drivers on the included CD, then 7.12 drivers from ATI's site. I had the black boarder problem ("VForceMaxResSize"="2800000") so ran the script for the registry fixes from your web site. I still had a black boarder, although smaller. Finally found out that underscan was set to a positive value in CCC, under DTV|Scaling Options. Setting it to zero fixed the display.

So far for 720p content CCC shows GPU at 31% with next to no dropped frames. With the 6150 Nvidia I was getting horrible dropped frames. I haven't come across any 1080i content yet (HD over DVB Satellite). I'm still using the Pure Video decoders with VMR9, and haven't really played with any of the ATI settings, but so far I'm a happy ATI customer.

Greg9504,
What cpu are you using?

For XP users...Any driver version of the card and PDVD ultra will work ok? I've read Vista users have to use an old 7.7 card driver version in order to have HW acceleration...

For XP users...Any driver version of the card and PDVD ultra will work ok? I've read Vista users have to use an old 7.7 card driver version in order to have HW acceleration...

I'm using XP MCE 2005 and an AGP Visiontek HD 2400 Pro. So far even after downgrading the OS to XP, I can only get the 7.7's to do any DXVA. 7.12's didn't appear to fix it even in XP.

EDIT: I have yet to try the Omega Drivers that were previously suggested, and I believe the current version is based on the 7.12's.

So what is being said here is the framebuffer in dxva needs to be increased? If so is this something that microsoft needs to address?

Cyberlink have gotten lazy and are making assumsions that profiles are going to break the dxva framebuffer size?
Well, yes, the framebuffer would need to be increased to allow for higher profile levels, but it's not a problem for a single company. What I should have said instead of "framebuffer" is "DPB size" (Decoded Picture Buffer). Someone just asked about it on Doom9 (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1082821#post1082821). Essentially, it is the size, in the framebuffer (memory), of a decoded frame, plus references and other things. It is a function of the total number of reference frames multiplied by the resolution of the video stream.

HD DVD and BD have adopted Profile High @ Level 4.1 into their standards. High@L4.1 requires a DPB of 12,582,912 bytes, which allows for num_ref_frames = 4 @ 1080p and num_ref_frames = 9 @ 720p, plus about 51% extra, for chroma planes, and other things.

The point is that the hardware decoders built into standalone players and video cards, like ATI's UVD chip and whatever Nvidia calls their PureVideo HD chip, have to know a set DPB size to build into their designs, and that size was standardized on the amount for High@L4.1.

As a result, it appears Cyberlink took that into account and limited DXVA to the constraints of High@L4.1. If you push a little past the constraints, i.e., set the resolution just a little higher than what would be allowed by the DPB size, then you just get buffer corruption. If you push much past the limits, then the Cyberlink decoder bails out and you get the black or gray screen.

I don't know that it's necessarily laziness on their part, but what it should do is fall back to software decoding, because you have exceeded the limitations of your hardware for DXVA if you exceed High@L4.1.

This is an important point --- the High@L4.1 is not an arbitrary limitation set by Cyberlink, it is the limit set by the HD DVD and BD standards, and as a result, the hardware decoder built into your video card.

Ahh, good stuff, thanks. So that means 1080p 2:35 aspect can be done with 5 ref frames - that's not so restrictive (except perhaps for anime?). Did you try anything with exactly 8294400? That's bang on 1920*1080*4.....
Yeah, those are all my tests at Doom9 (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1081891#post1081891) that worked. They were 8294400.

it now seems quite obvious that the header is causing the problems, the movie itself remains encoded in 5.1 its just that the decoder thinks its 4.1
I don't think that's true. I think the streams you are testing comply with L4.1, the level just wasn't specified when encoding. If the level isn't specified, the default is assumed to be L5.1.

the only question left is, is the header broken by x264 or does the decoder treat 4,1 differently from 5.1
I believe the decoder treats L5.1 differently, because the decoder is meant to comply with L4.1. See my next post.

What this also seems to imply is that we can probably keep using 5.1 and lots of b frames and pyramids, all that needs to be done is adjust the header back to 4.1 and it will work, however a lot more testing is needed
You keep referencing differences between L4.1 and L5.1 that I don't understand. Can you point me to documentation that states L5.1 allows features with B-frames and B-pyramids that aren't allowed in L4.1?

The levels simply specify what can fit in a specific DPB size, which determines a max resolution and a max number of reference frames. The levels don't allow or prohibit specific features, like number of B-frames, adaptive B-frames, or B-pyramids. You can use up to 16 B-frames, adaptive B-frames, and B-pyramids in L4.1 or L5.1, as long as the DPB size (num_ref_frames * resolution) is allowed by the level. Features like you mentioned are specified by profiles, not levels, and we have only been discussing High Profile here.

Everything has been cleared up for me about the "levels"

Hardware players refuse to play or choke on streams which have a level_idc of 4.2 or higher (however some still accept 4.2, 5 and above and they all show problems)

x264 does absolutely nothing with levels, it just sets the level_idc to 5.1 if nothing else is specified, it does not change encoding settings in any way whatsoever

-----------------------

Also it would seem that anything encoded in High@4.1 and within 4.1 DPB size limit will work on any hardware player, It doesnt matter what options you set in the encoder as long as the DPB limit is not crossed.

Now all that we have to do is find the best combination of settings for 480p, 576p, 720p and 1080p (and basically everything in between for the different aspect ratios)

I tested encoding an identical stream 3 times with x264, setting L4.1, L5.1, and level "unrestricted", and storing each stream in an MKV container. All encodes comply with L4.1 (num_ref_frames = 4 @ 1080p), despite the level_idc value, because we already know L4.1 compliance is required for DXVA.

I then demuxed the MKVs, and used h264info to overwrite the L5.1 and LU files with L4.1 and L5.1. I remuxed the streams into MKVs and tested playback.

The result was that there is no reason to believe x264 is writing corrupt header information. The files behave the same whether the level_idc tag was written by x264 or h264info. It appears the Cyberlink decoder, when supporting DXVA, needs the level_idc value to be set at 4.1 for smooth playback.

Level_idc: set to 4.1 by x264
Result: Smooth DXVA playback

Level_idc: set to 5.1 by x264, changed to 5.1 with h264info
Result: Choppy DXVA playback

Level_idc: set to 5.1 by x264, changed to 4.1 with h264info
Result: Smooth DXVA playback

Level_idc: Unrestricted, defaulted to 5.1 by x264
Result: Choppy DXVA playback

Level_idc: Unrestricted, defaulted to 5.1 by x264, changed to 5.1 by h264info
Result: Choppy DXVA playback

Level_idc: Unrestricted, defaulted to 5.1 by x264, changed to 4.1 by h264info
Result: Smooth DXVA playback

These results confirm what my other tests have found: for DXVA, you must comply with L4.1. For smooth DXVA playback, your stream must declare L4.1 in the level_idc tag.

Okay that confirms my last post

In that case these would seem to be the maximum quality settings, (something could go wrong with the b-pyramid one's as i have not tested to see if their end result is more than 2 (this could be the case in the SD files))

I believe these are the best settings for hardware accelerated h264 files, please correct me if i made a mistake

In ALL cases, profile must be High@4.1

1920x1080p --ref 1 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --b-pyramid
1920x1080p --ref 3 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --no-b-pyramid

1280x720p --ref 6 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --b-pyramid
1280x720p --ref 8 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --no-b-pyramid

720×576p --ref 17 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --b-pyramid
720×576p --ref 19 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --no-b-pyramid

720×480p --ref 21 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --b-pyramid
720×480p --ref 23 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --no-b-pyramid

Everything has been cleared up for me about the "levels"

Hardware players refuse to play or choke on streams which have a level_idc of 4.2 or higher (however some still accept 4.2, 5 and above and they all show problems)

x264 does absolutely nothing with levels, it just sets the level_idc to 5.1 if nothing else is specified, it does not change encoding settings in any way whatsoever

-----------------------

Also it would seem that anything encoded in High@4.1 and within 4.1 DPB size limit will work on any hardware player, It doesnt matter what options you set in the encoder as long as the DPB limit is not crossed.

Now all that we have to do is find the best combination of settings for 480p, 576p, 720p and 1080p (and basically everything in between for the different aspect ratios)
Good, I'm glad we are in agreement.

Everybody should be encoding to L4.1 with L4.1 set in the stream for HD (1080p, 720p) --- for DXVA playback or any hardware players. That means the PS3 profile for x264, with B-pyramids turned off.

Everybody should be encoding to L3.1 with L3.1 set in the stream for SD (576p, 480p, or less).

Keep in mind that, despite the resolution, it is still generally recommended to only use between 1-5 reference frames, usually centering on 3.

The max reference frames can be broken down as follows. The number of reference frames is the max at the given resolution, so if your resolution is between the resolutions given, use the lower number of reference frames (i.e., 1920x816 is between 1920x720 and 1920x864, so you can have a max of 5 reference frames). B-frames count towards one reference frame, which means when encoding with x264, --ref needs to be set to one less than each value (i.e., if max num_ref_frames = 4, then --ref 3 should be used):

resolution: max num_ref_frames (x264 encoder settings)
L4.1
1920x1088: 4 (--ref 3 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --no-b-pyramid) or (--ref 1 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --b-pyramid)
1920x864: 5 (--ref 4 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --no-b-pyramid) or (--ref 2 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --b-pyramid)
1920x720: 6 (--ref 5 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --no-b-pyramid) or (--ref 3 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --b-pyramid)

L4.1
1280x720: 9 (--ref 8 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --no-b-pyramid) or (--ref 6 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --b-pyramid)
1280x648: 10 (--ref 9 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --no-b-pyramid) or (--ref 7 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --b-pyramid)
1280x588: 11 (--ref 10 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --no-b-pyramid) or (--ref 8 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --b-pyramid)
1280x540: 12 (--ref 11 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --no-b-pyramid) or (--ref 9 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --b-pyramid)
1280x498: 13 (--ref 12 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --no-b-pyramid) or (--ref 10 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --b-pyramid)
1280x462: 14 (--ref 13 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --no-b-pyramid) or (--ref 11 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --b-pyramid)
1280x432: 15 (--ref 14 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --no-b-pyramid) or (--ref 12 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --b-pyramid)
1280x405: 16 (--ref 15 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --no-b-pyramid) or (--ref 13 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --b-pyramid)

L3.1
720x(any): 8 (--ref 10 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --no-b-pyramid) or (--ref 8 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --b-pyramid)
720x576: 11 (--ref 10 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --no-b-pyramid) or (--ref 8 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --b-pyramid)
720x480: 13 (--ref 12 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --no-b-pyramid) or (--ref 11 --bframes 3 --b-adapt --b-pyramid)

I believe these are the best settings for hardware accelerated h264 files, please correct me if i made a mistake
Ha, I think we had the same idea for a post.

However, --ref can never go past 16. I believe the limitation is that num_ref_frames can never go past 16, so you actually can't go past --ref 15 if you have B-frames, or --ref 13 if you have B-pyramids.

Cool

Your list is better!

Now all that's left is a quality comparison between b-pyramids = yes and b-pyramids = no

Guys - we should maybe start a new thread for x264 dxva? It's not really an ATI issue as far as I can see, so it would be a good resource for Nvidia folk to test and post results. Ex-Deus: perhaps a repeat of your #3898 post above? It's a good summary.

On a semi-related note, I wonder how the Arcsoft decoder behaves with DPB size and so on.

Hello
By the way, in RadeonHD3870 and Vista, can I use ATI HD2x00 Registry Tweaks?
An error is given in my environment.:confused:
Registry positions seem to be different.
However, I can use it in XP.
Why is this?
I want to do it to UseBT601CSC =1.

I've got a Visiontek AGP HD2600 XT running the 7.12 ATI Catalyst drivers thanks to a bit of .ini hacking thoughtfully figured out by ExDeus's. :)

This is awesome, as it solved the hard-lockup problems this card has had. However, the new driver has one very annoying issue. When a 3d app is running, and Windows Explorer generates a tooltip on mouseover (as it does any time the pointer passes over an application's icon in the task bar), the frame rate for the whole desktop (not just the 3d app) goes to about 1 frame every 3 seconds, with the mouse pointer not being drawn at all. Any other apps running on the system also seize up (audio loops, background tasks choke). When you are able to get the pointer off of the piece of windows that generated the tooltip, once the tooltip goes away, the system goes back to normal. This takes 15-20 seconds, as the tooltip fades out at 1 frame every 3 seconds. ;)

It doesn't matter whether the tooltip is on the same display as the d3d app, or whether it's on top of or away from the app's window- generation of the tooltip makes the system very angry. :)

Anyone else experience this? Any ideas for getting it to behave a little better? :)

Greg9504,
What cpu are you using?

mijoeldotor,

My system is a few years old. MSI K8NGM2-FID motherboard, AMD 3200+ 939 CPU, 1Gig Memory, with SkyStar2 DVB-S card. I'm running MyTheatre for the DVB app.

I tried some 1080i channels last night and the GPU was at 61% but I had some dropped frames, enough to notice. However I'm still trying to find what would be the best settings. I'm using the Nvidia Pure Video decoders. Does ATI have a similar product? After installing the CCC software I don't seem to have any additional decoders available...

I'm having a problem with playing Resident Evil Extinction on Blu-ray.

Setup:

Vista 32bit
AMD X2 3800+
ATI 2600xt with Catalyst 7.12 and 7.7 drivers
Powerdvd 7.3.3516
LG GGC-H20LI drive


First HD title I've run into that won't play properly (knock on wood). Had to upgrade to 3516 as the previous version I had installed would only play the movie with the Spanish track. No previews, FBI warnings, menus, etc. Very strange. BUT it played the movie with out stuttering.

When I upgraded to 3516, I got the previews, warnings, menus, etc. But the movie would peg my CPU at 100% and would stutter horrendously.

As it seems the 7.12 drivers have a problem with H/W accel, I downgraded the video drivers to 7.7. Now the play back is better, CPU is not always pegged at 100%, but is still very high (i.e. 60-90+%). At times, it would still hit 100% and stutter.

I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling both Powerdvd and the drivers. No luck.

Anyone have any suggestions on what I could do to improve the playback?

I'm having a problem with playing Resident Evil Extinction on Blu-ray.

Setup:

Vista 32bit
AMD X2 3800+
ATI 2600xt with Catalyst 7.12 and 7.7 drivers
Powerdvd 7.3.3516
LG GGC-H20LI drive


First HD title I've run into that won't play properly (knock on wood). Had to upgrade to 3516 as the previous version I had installed would only play the movie with the Spanish track. No previews, FBI warnings, menus, etc. Very strange. BUT it played the movie with out stuttering.

When I upgraded to 3516, I got the previews, warnings, menus, etc. But the movie would peg my CPU at 100% and would stutter horrendously.

As it seems the 7.12 drivers have a problem with H/W accel, I downgraded the video drivers to 7.7. Now the play back is better, CPU is not always pegged at 100%, but is still very high (i.e. 60-90+%). At times, it would still hit 100% and stutter.

I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling both Powerdvd and the drivers. No luck.

Anyone have any suggestions on what I could do to improve the playback?


Is that disk AVC or VC-1? I've noticed with my setup that even when DXVA is working for AVC, it still pegs my CPU. Before DXVA was working for AVC, watching the Transformers HD-DVD was like watching a slideshow. Once I got DXVA "working" for AVC, the video was watchable, but still stuttered quite a bit.

On the other hand, with DXVA on VC-1 disks, I have no such issues. Playback is always smooth, and CPU usage doesn't usually go over 15%.

If you see the same issues, my guess would be that DXVA for AVC still isn't quite perfected yet, since as far as I know, both of them are supposed to be fully offloaded to the UVD to decode according to ATI's advertising.

If you see the same issues, my guess would be that DXVA for AVC still isn't quite perfected yet, since as far as I know, both of them are supposed to be fully offloaded to the UVD to decode according to ATI's advertising.

If it's working, they are totally offloaded. Your problem is probably that the AVC discs you have also have interactive stuff that PowerDVD uses the CPU for (these can eat processor power ridiculously).

RE:Extinction is AVC.

Arfster,

I think your explanation makes sense. With the older version of PDVD, it played back smoothly even without DXVA working properly.

Any way to turn the processing of the interactive stuff off?

If it's working, they are totally offloaded. Your problem is probably that the AVC discs you have also have interactive stuff that PowerDVD uses the CPU for (these can eat processor power ridiculously).

Should that interactive stuff even be active/using CPU cycles if all I'm doing is loading the disk into the drive, getting to the main menu, and hitting "Play Movie"? If that's really the case, Cyberlink needs to make PowerDVD more efficient. To me, if a standalone HD-DVD player uses HWA to decode the movie (they do to my knowledge), I'd think they'd also choke on interactive stuff since I doubt a player has the processing power of even an old PC to handle stuff like that.

My thought was maybe it was something to do with DRM/decrypting the disk.

Should that interactive stuff even be active/using CPU cycles if all I'm doing is loading the disk into the drive, getting to the main menu, and hitting "Play Movie"? If that's really the case, Cyberlink needs to make PowerDVD more efficient.

PDVD is a piece of garbage :-( You just need see how easily basic codecs play Bluray/HDDVD video once you decrypt them - there's simply no valid excuse for the whole range of problems it has.

I currently have an older system with AGP slots only. Is the radeon hd 2600 xt agp my best bet when using my HD TV as a monitor? I currently am running an outdated ATI 9800 pro with a DVI -> HDMI cable. My system is a 3.3 ghz P4 with 1 GB of ram. My MB is a ABIT IC7-G. All was near top of the line when I had it put together, but not it is mostly obsolete. If I do upgrade to the radeon hd 2600 xt agp will normal everyday content look any better?

PDVD is a piece of garbage :-( You just need see how easily basic codecs play Bluray/HDDVD video once you decrypt them - there's simply no valid excuse for the whole range of problems it has.

Well, until Cyberlink has motivation to start fixing it (read: competition), I'm sure it will continue to suck. Right now it's all I can use for HD-DVD or Blu-ray with my MCE setup. Luckily the "My Movies" application for Media Center somewhat integrates it into the Media Center interface. If it wasn't for that, even PDVD would be essentially worthless for my setup.

Actually, if I recall correctly, I think I read somewhere that PDVD has new issues now that Cyberlink introduced with the newest builds that removes the ability to play ripped DVD's from hard disk or to use file mode. Way to go bowing to the media cartel Cyberlink. I'll have to make sure NOT to "upgrade" any time soon!

I'm actually to the point where I'm more tempted to just go out and get some of these x264 rips of movies instead of buying them, simply because I know they will work once the people ripping them start using the settings you guys have been talking about to allow the rips to utilize DXVA. This is just another case of the media conglomerates alienating a paying customer by dictating how I can use things I purchases.... Of course all of that is for another thread!

I currently have an older system with AGP slots only. Is the radeon hd 2600 xt agp my best bet when using my HD TV as a monitor? I currently am running an outdated ATI 9800 pro with a DVI -> HDMI cable. My system is a 3.3 ghz P4 with 1 GB of ram. My MB is a ABIT IC7-G. All was near top of the line when I had it put together, but not it is mostly obsolete. If I do upgrade to the radeon hd 2600 xt agp will normal everyday content look any better?

The 2600 will be a good choice for HD content once the AGP drivers get up to par. When DXVA works, it works great. When it doesn't, on an old PC you're essentially watching a slide show.

As far as helping content look better, I'm don't know too much about which cards do the best at image quality. But if I recall correctly, the 2600 does more post-processing than the 2400's do. If you're referring to upconverting DVD's, I'm not really sure how it would work - haven't really tried it yet since I've been fighting with the DXVA issues so I can watch more real HD content.

Is 7.7 Catalyst the newest driver that works with acceleration? I just upgraded from a 1950Pro to a 2600Pro to get HW acceleration and was very disappointed to see I'm still not getting it. I installed the 7.12 drivers at the same time as the 2600Pro, before that I was running the 7.10 drivers.

If I go back to the 7.7 drivers I'm pretty sure I'm going to have an underscan problem, as it was 7.10 that fixed that issue for me.

Jkohn,

If you're using Vista, I believe 7.7 is the version to use. I tried 7.12 and didn't get any acceleration from the GPU.

Is 7.7 Catalyst the newest driver that works with acceleration? I just upgraded from a 1950Pro to a 2600Pro to get HW acceleration and was very disappointed to see I'm still not getting it. I installed the 7.12 drivers at the same time as the 2600Pro, before that I was running the 7.10 drivers.

If I go back to the 7.7 drivers I'm pretty sure I'm going to have an underscan problem, as it was 7.10 that fixed that issue for me.

7.7 is the latest one I've been able to get that will do DXVA. I also had underscan issues that I was able to fix in the CCC.

I thought I'd post a success story to give people reading this thread some hope :)

I've had an SD HTPC for 2-3 years now, and it was getting a little long in the tooth and i didn't think it would be up to scratch as an HD Player, so i ordered standalone UP5000 but these things don't seem to be appearing in the UK and i found a xbox 360 drive in pc world for 79 quid so i thoutght i'd give it a go.

I have a low profile pc case which is entirely passivly cooled, with an undervolted p4 2.8 northwood with heatpipes and a heatsink on the case and a passivly cooled 250w PSU.

anyway installed windows vista. popped in the Sapphire 2600pro AGP 512 card, installed the drivers from the sapphire website (cc7.11). Plugged in XBOX drive and installed powerdvd ultra deluxe, latest version.
chucked in Harry Potter POA HDDVD and it played back almost perfectly with TRUE HD sound out the analogue. CPU usage was 40-60% so Hardware accel seems to be working for VC-1 at least.
So there seems to be hope for those of us with older low power AGP PC's.

All i need to do now is sort out the NOISY FAN on the card (will probably install a VF100 cooler). does anyone know if its possible to make the XBOX drive spin slower or quiter? I will probably add a BD drive when a cheap internal slimline one is available (The optiarc one maybe?)

Finally as far as the picture goes it was fantastic, the only slight issue i was seeing was some mini judder\flickering on some pans. simlar to what i see whn playing PAL DVD's at 60hz refresh? Is this to be expected with HDDVD at 720p60? I haven't really played with settings yet but a quick test at 1080i30 showed similar. What settings should i use for de-interlacing in PDVD or\and in CCC?

thx
RD

The 2600 will be a good choice for HD content once the AGP drivers get up to par. When DXVA works, it works great. When it doesn't, on an old PC you're essentially watching a slide show.

As far as helping content look better, I'm don't know too much about which cards do the best at image quality. But if I recall correctly, the 2600 does more post-processing than the 2400's do. If you're referring to upconverting DVD's, I'm not really sure how it would work - haven't really tried it yet since I've been fighting with the DXVA issues so I can watch more real HD content.

what i am asking is if the desk top generic programs i run look better? Isn't cable of displaying in 64 bit color or just the 32?

Have any experienced trouble using ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT with a HP w2207h LCD MONITOR (the newer one with HDMI instead of DVI input)? The CCC discover the monitor as HDTV and only HDTV resolutions are available. Trying to Force 1680x1050 60Hz causes the LCD to shut itself off. At boot-up before starting windows the card and monitor works fine with 1680x1050.


Is it Vista or gfx card who cause the toruble? Is it possible to tweak the card in some way?

I've got a Visiontek AGP HD2600 XT running the 7.12 ATI Catalyst drivers thanks to a bit of .ini hacking thoughtfully figured out by ExDeus's. :)

This is awesome, as it solved the hard-lockup problems this card has had. However, the new driver has one very annoying issue. When a 3d app is running, and Windows Explorer generates a tooltip on mouseover (as it does any time the pointer passes over an application's icon in the task bar), the frame rate for the whole desktop (not just the 3d app) goes to about 1 frame every 3 seconds, with the mouse pointer not being drawn at all. Any other apps running on the system also seize up (audio loops, background tasks choke). When you are able to get the pointer off of the piece of windows that generated the tooltip, once the tooltip goes away, the system goes back to normal. This takes 15-20 seconds, as the tooltip fades out at 1 frame every 3 seconds. ;)

It doesn't matter whether the tooltip is on the same display as the d3d app, or whether it's on top of or away from the app's window- generation of the tooltip makes the system very angry. :)

Anyone else experience this? Any ideas for getting it to behave a little better? :)

Try this:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=12670195&postcount=3846

I'm having a problem with playing Resident Evil Extinction on Blu-ray.

Setup:

Vista 32bit
AMD X2 3800+
ATI 2600xt with Catalyst 7.12 and 7.7 drivers
Powerdvd 7.3.3516
LG GGC-H20LI drive


First HD title I've run into that won't play properly (knock on wood). Had to upgrade to 3516 as the previous version I had installed would only play the movie with the Spanish track. No previews, FBI warnings, menus, etc. Very strange. BUT it played the movie with out stuttering.

When I upgraded to 3516, I got the previews, warnings, menus, etc. But the movie would peg my CPU at 100% and would stutter horrendously.

As it seems the 7.12 drivers have a problem with H/W accel, I downgraded the video drivers to 7.7. Now the play back is better, CPU is not always pegged at 100%, but is still very high (i.e. 60-90+%). At times, it would still hit 100% and stutter.

I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling both Powerdvd and the drivers. No luck.

Anyone have any suggestions on what I could do to improve the playback?

Read this:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=12670195&postcount=3846

I currently have an older system with AGP slots only. Is the radeon hd 2600 xt agp my best bet when using my HD TV as a monitor? I currently am running an outdated ATI 9800 pro with a DVI -> HDMI cable. My system is a 3.3 ghz P4 with 1 GB of ram. My MB is a ABIT IC7-G. All was near top of the line when I had it put together, but not it is mostly obsolete. If I do upgrade to the radeon hd 2600 xt agp will normal everyday content look any better?

If you are a gamer go for the 38x0 AGP, otherwise the 2600XT is the best choice, once installed correctly they do help with certain everyday content like DVD and H264 SD material

Is 7.7 Catalyst the newest driver that works with acceleration? I just upgraded from a 1950Pro to a 2600Pro to get HW acceleration and was very disappointed to see I'm still not getting it. I installed the 7.12 drivers at the same time as the 2600Pro, before that I was running the 7.10 drivers.

If I go back to the 7.7 drivers I'm pretty sure I'm going to have an underscan problem, as it was 7.10 that fixed that issue for me.

Look here:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=12670195&postcount=3846

Jkohn,

If you're using Vista, I believe 7.7 is the version to use. I tried 7.12 and didn't get any acceleration from the GPU.

Try this:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=12670195&postcount=3846

7.7 is the latest one I've been able to get that will do DXVA. I also had underscan issues that I was able to fix in the CCC.

Read here:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=12670195&postcount=3846

Great post helping out folks tetsuo55! :)

Jkohn,

If you're using Vista, I believe 7.7 is the version to use. I tried 7.12 and didn't get any acceleration from the GPU.

I'm using XP Pro SP2.

Tetsuo,

I've already looked at your guide before I posted. Does it apply to Vista? I was under the impression the Omega drivers were for XP.

I follow Tetsuo55 guide and black screen with h264 movies..
I rename correct files on powerdvd directory but seems that my Athlon XP 1900+ can't emulate sse2 CPU :-((
"IA SSE 2: not detected " appears on PowerDvd Info tab and of course "DirectX VA: not in use" during H264 content playback

I installed the ATI 7.12 drivers and AVIVO decoder, and everything is working as well or better than ever.

DXVA works for AVC, VC-1, and MPEG2. The problem I was having with deinterlacing artifacts on SD NTSC video content is mostly gone, also. The picture does appear a little soft when VA deinterlacing is forced; a little less so with plain old BOB. There is still improvement to be had with deinterlacing for SD NTSC video content, though I think I have some particularly difficult content that was converted to NTSC from PAL.


Well, I take back what I said about SD content... HD looks great (not perfect...scrolling tickers always scroll for about a second and a half, then chop, then scroll for a half second, then chop), but now SD has some pretty bad interlacing artifacts. It doesn't seem to make any difference which of the last three deinterlacing methods I choose in CCC (Adaptive, Motion Adaptive, Vector Adaptive), the artifacts are identical. This is very disappointing, because it should be doing *something*. I admit, I didn't test SD to much extent, and then ran the VBS that changes all of the registry settings for the 2400, so maybe the trdenoise needs turned back on...or something? I'm so frustrated with this.


ExDeus,

I'm having a terrible time with SD content from Dish Network captured via R5000-HD. My main HTPC has an HIS 2600XT fanless and is running Vista. I'm getting nasty mouse teeth and jitter unless I set the Avivo Basic Quality to Bob. I've tried so many different codecs and drivers, but I haven't yet tried Cat 7.12 on that machine. I did try it on my XP machine which has a Sapphire 2600XT and had the same problem. Is that the kind of problem you were having?

PainBreak,

I think you and I are having the same problem. Did you ever get this resolved?

Rather than cross posting my entire specs from the SageTV forum here's my thread:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29757

Guys - we should maybe start a new thread for x264 dxva? It's not really an ATI issue as far as I can see, so it would be a good resource for Nvidia folk to test and post results. Ex-Deus: perhaps a repeat of your #3898 post above? It's a good summary.

On a semi-related note, I wonder how the Arcsoft decoder behaves with DPB size and so on.
Yes, a good point. I think I shall.

Don't know about Arcsoft.

popped in the Sapphire 2600pro AGP 512 card
Club3D has a passive cooled HD2600 Pro. So you could try to do that.

Could you please tell more about the passive cooled CPU and PSU stuff? What did you use for that?

Hello
By the way, in RadeonHD3870 and Vista, can I use ATI HD2x00 Registry Tweaks?
An error is given in my environment.:confused:
Registry positions seem to be different.
However, I can use it in XP.
Why is this?
I want to do it to UseBT601CSC =1.
What is the error under Vista?

ExDeus,

I'm having a terrible time with SD content from Dish Network captured via R5000-HD. My main HTPC has an HIS 2600XT fanless and is running Vista. I'm getting nasty mouse teeth and jitter unless I set the Avivo Basic Quality to Bob. I've tried so many different codecs and drivers, but I haven't yet tried Cat 7.12 on that machine. I did try it on my XP machine which has a Sapphire 2600XT and had the same problem. Is that the kind of problem you were having?
It sounds like we are seeing the same, or similar things. Mine was basically only on NTSC VIDEO material, some of which was converted from PAL. FILM content always looked good.

While Cat 7.12 didn't eliminate the interlacing artifacts completely, it was a huge improvement.

Hi!

Isn't there a way to make H.264-DXVA work with Catalyst 7.12 and resolutions above 1.31 mpixels like 1680x1050 ?

Or has a reason been found for this step back since it last worked on Catalyst 7.10 ?

Thx a lot
Bauerhorscht

Hi!

Isn't there a way to make H.264-DXVA work with Catalyst 7.12 and resolutions above 1.31 mpixels like 1680x1050 ?

Or has a reason been found for this step back since it last worked on Catalyst 7.10 ?


Never had a problem with that resolution here and h264 dxva, with any diver (vista 32+2600xt).

I have an HD 2600XT paired with AMD 64 X2 5000+ running under XP Home SP2, Catalyst 7.12. I have PowerDVD 6 for playing back standard DVDs. With hardware acceleration on I get jerky play back on some panned scenes. Example is near the end of "Return of the King" where the camera pans across the map the video is very jerky (stutters). I used DECCHECK (MS software) to select the Cyberlink/ATI decoder for windows media player (WMP) and when I play the same scene the play back is almost perfect. The only problem in WMP is that the black level seems to be wrong, the black bars next to the picture are not as black as the black bars around the 16:9 picture on my 16:10 display. I also downloaded PowerDVD 7 and tried it and I get the same performance as with 6 and WMP plays fine with PDVD 7 decoder. Does anyone have any suggestions as to why WMP plays back the video with less stutters than PowerDVD using PowerDVD's decoder? Is there a way I can fix the black level problem in WMP?

Thanks.

Hi!

Isn't there a way to make H.264-DXVA work with Catalyst 7.12 and resolutions above 1.31 mpixels like 1680x1050 ?

Or has a reason been found for this step back since it last worked on Catalyst 7.10 ?

Thx a lot
Bauerhorscht
Since we've been discussing DXVA with H.264, I just want to make sure you know the resolutions discussed are the resolutions of the VIDEO CLIPS, not your DISPLAY resolution.

That being clear, I don't have a display capable of 1680x1050, so I can't comment on any difficulties with that.

Since we've been discussing DXVA with H.264, I just want to make sure you know the resolutions discussed are the resolutions of the VIDEO CLIPS, not your DISPLAY resolution.

Thx, I wasn't sure which kind you meant, but I'm talking about DISPLAY resolution. Video source is either 1080i Live TV or recorderd TV.

And I used a 2600 Pro PCIe, XP SP2 and PowerDVD 7.3.3514's H.264 codec in DVBViewer. As mentioned all of the listed DISPLAY resolutions up to ~1.3 mpixels support DXVA and those above don't.

I'm gonna make the same tests with the 2400 Pro PCIe in my HTPC, of which I know it runs quite perfectly with Catalyst 7.12 and 1280x720.

Tetsuo,

I've already looked at your guide before I posted. Does it apply to Vista? I was under the impression the Omega drivers were for XP.

Omage drivers are released for winxp, vista and sometimes also in 64bit versions

I follow Tetsuo55 guide and black screen with h264 movies..
I rename correct files on powerdvd directory but seems that my Athlon XP 1900+ can't emulate sse2 CPU :-((
"IA SSE 2: not detected " appears on PowerDvd Info tab and of course "DirectX VA: not in use" during H264 content playback

Are you sure the streams are compatible? black screen usually means the stream is not dxva compatible

Thx, I wasn't sure which kind you meant, but I'm talking about DISPLAY resolution. Video source is either 1080i Live TV or recorderd TV.

And I used a 2600 Pro PCIe, XP SP2 and PowerDVD 7.3.3514's H.264 codec in DVBViewer. As mentioned all of the listed DISPLAY resolutions up to ~1.3 mpixels support DXVA and those above don't.

I'm gonna make the same tests with the 2400 Pro PCIe in my HTPC, of which I know it runs quite perfectly with Catalyst 7.12 and 1280x720.

I think the 7.12 changelog mentioned that this bug was fixed

Did you run drivercleaner before installing 7.12?

What is the error under Vista?

Thank you for an answer.
An error is comment of a photograph.
Of course I invalidate UAC.
I do not know a lot about Vista.
In addition, I do not understand measures method and am troubled....

Thank you

Omage drivers are released for winxp, vista and sometimes also in 64bit versions



Are you sure the streams are compatible? black screen usually means the stream is not dxva compatible

Tetsuo55 can you tell me some H264 content that works with dll rename for non-sse CPUs? Internet link or name for download....

I try with Apple MOV trailers like Die Hard 1080p and the result was slow open and black screen on PowerDVD.. If i restore dlls to original names then trailers are playable but without dxva active and of course 100% cpu utilization :-(( ..

DXdiag passes all direct 3d tests with your guide :) thanks

Hello, I have been flipping through this thread and have not been able to find some info. I just swapped my 7900 gto for a 2600xt. Problem is when i run any video i get green lines running across the screen. I am using the latest catalyst drivers. does this at 1920x1080 and 1280x720

Anyone have a solution?

thank you

Hello, I have been flipping through this thread and have not been able to find some info. I just swapped my 7900 gto for a 2600xt. Problem is when i run any video i get green lines running across the screen. I am using the latest catalyst drivers. does this at 1920x1080 and 1280x720

Anyone have a solution?

thank you

Seems like you have a refresh problem - are you sure the output for monitor/lcd/plasma is within the correct hz???

----------------------
Findings on 7.12's - mostly trash ( crysis hotfix much better on my Dell 9200 with pci 2600xt)

7.12's for me give me hassle when returning from susspend mode ( i have ctr+alt+del to envoke the display driver to function - a real pain).

Guys - thanks for the work on the compliant profiles - they seem spot on!!!

All the best

J.

And I used a 2600 Pro PCIe, XP SP2 and PowerDVD 7.3.3514's H.264 codec in DVBViewer. As mentioned all of the listed DISPLAY resolutions up to ~1.3 mpixels support DXVA and those above don't.

I'm gonna make the same tests with the 2400 Pro PCIe in my HTPC, of which I know it runs quite perfectly with Catalyst 7.12 and 1280x720.

It's the same with my HTPC! No H.264-DXVA at 1680x1050.
And I'm sure I used the "ATI software uninstall utility" on my 2600 Pro machine before installing catalyst 7.12. Might there still be remnants of the old driver then?

I follow Tetsuo55 guide and black screen with h264 movies..
I rename correct files on powerdvd directory but seems that my Athlon XP 1900+ can't emulate sse2 CPU :-((
"IA SSE 2: not detected " appears on PowerDvd Info tab and of course "DirectX VA: not in use" during H264 content playback

It is exactly the same for me. Swapping sse.dll does not change anything for h264 but if I try it on vc1sse.dll it corrupts the image. It is not an issue for me as Ihave Athlon XP 3000+. On h264 content the load is 80-90%. Thus, if there is a DD audio to decode the processor load jumps to 100% and the video stutters. Switching to LPCM makes it watchable again. Wonder if there is a way to stop decoding and just send the stream to SPDIF.

What really drives me crazy that for some reason several HD DVD titles are no longer possible to watch (Bourne and the kingdom). For no apparent reason. I restored the system from Ghost image which I was thinking made at the time when all titles were watchable but no luck.

Right now at 7.11 crysis hotfix and PDVD 3319a.

Omage drivers are released for winxp, vista and sometimes also in 64bit versions


Hmmm... I selected ATI + Vista 32 and it says "Stay tuned, coming soon..."

Try this:


Oooh! Those Omega drivers work very nicely, without any of the problems that the (unmodified) Catalyst 7.12 package has. Thank you, I had never heard of them before. :)

Seems like you have a refresh problem - are you sure the output for monitor/lcd/plasma is within the correct hz???

----------------------
Findings on 7.12's - mostly trash ( crysis hotfix much better on my Dell 9200 with pci 2600xt)

7.12's for me give me hassle when returning from susspend mode ( i have ctr+alt+del to envoke the display driver to function - a real pain).

Guys - thanks for the work on the compliant profiles - they seem spot on!!!

All the best

J.

Sorry I should have clarified, i only get this when playing any video format. Otherwise everything is fine. The card is outputting 60hz, TV does 60 and 120Hz. Any other ideas, Iam stumped.

Sorry I should have clarified, i only get this when playing any video format. Otherwise everything is fine. The card is outputting 60hz, TV does 60 and 120Hz. Any other ideas, Iam stumped.
What's the length of your DVI/HDMI cable? Mine is 10 meters and already producing green en pink distortion so bad at 20p and 1080p it's unwatchable. Fortunately 1024x576 works well, and that's the native resolution of my projector. Btw every resolution has a different distortion pattern, it never looks the same. If you recognise this, it's prolly because of the length of the cable. It´s a well-known fact that many videocards send out a relatively weak output signal. DVD-players and HD-players do much beter most of the time. I don't know if the signal can be boosted.

Tetsuo55 can you tell me some H264 content that works with dll rename for non-sse CPUs? Internet link or name for download....

I try with Apple MOV trailers like Die Hard 1080p and the result was slow open and black screen on PowerDVD.. If i restore dlls to original names then trailers are playable but without dxva active and of course 100% cpu utilization :-(( ..

DXdiag passes all direct 3d tests with your guide :) thanks

Either download or make a backup of a original HDDVD or Bluray with a h264 stream, the other option is to transcode a file using this guide: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=972503
Seems like you have a refresh problem - are you sure the output for monitor/lcd/plasma is within the correct hz???

----------------------
Findings on 7.12's - mostly trash ( crysis hotfix much better on my Dell 9200 with pci 2600xt)

7.12's for me give me hassle when returning from susspend mode ( i have ctr+alt+del to envoke the display driver to function - a real pain).

Guys - thanks for the work on the compliant profiles - they seem spot on!!!

All the best

J.

The crysis hotfix drivers are better overall, but thanks to the fixes by the omega team the omega drivers are a bit better for most users, as soon as omega releases 8.1 drivers these will be even better as they will be 2 to 4 weeks newer than the hotfix drivers.

It is exactly the same for me. Swapping sse.dll does not change anything for h264 but if I try it on vc1sse.dll it corrupts the image. It is not an issue for me as Ihave Athlon XP 3000+. On h264 content the load is 80-90%. Thus, if there is a DD audio to decode the processor load jumps to 100% and the video stutters. Switching to LPCM makes it watchable again. Wonder if there is a way to stop decoding and just send the stream to SPDIF.

What really drives me crazy that for some reason several HD DVD titles are no longer possible to watch (Bourne and the kingdom). For no apparent reason. I restored the system from Ghost image which I was thinking made at the time when all titles were watchable but no luck.

Right now at 7.11 crysis hotfix and PDVD 3319a.

Did you follow my guide? you seem to be using original HD DVD titles so these should be working. Try upgrading your PDVD version to get those movies working
Guide: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=12670195&postcount=3846

Hmmm... I selected ATI + Vista 32 and it says "Stay tuned, coming soon..."


Sorry about that, but you can still do it manually,
Install 7.7, copy over the ati dll file to your desktop
Install 7.12, after the error follow DeusEX's guide:
add the ini entries to the ini files
Install 7.12 this time it should work
When 7.12 is installed go into safe mode and replace the ati dll with the old one, then reboot
Apply DeusEx patches and reboot

Everything "should" be working, if not 8.1 should solve a LOT of problems

Oooh! Those Omega drivers work very nicely, without any of the problems that the (unmodified) Catalyst 7.12 package has. Thank you, I had never heard of them before. :)

Good to hear that it all worked out for you.


For the people with the resolution problems:

Make sure you have followed my guide:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=12670195&postcount=3846

Ati was supposed to have fixed these issues with the 7.12 release, if my guide cannot help you then file a report with ATI that DXVA is broken at those resolutions, you do not have to tell them what you did to get it all working, just assume it works out of the box.

Probably it will be fixed in 8.1 but if it isnt your bugreports will make sure ATI knows about the issue

Hello,

There has been much discussion about H.264 DXVA in this thread. However, I have difficulties to get SD (PAL) DXVA to work. My system is:

AMD64 3200, 1Gb
New ASUS Radeon 2400Pro,
Windows Vista Home Premiun 32bit

I use DVBViewer Pro 3.9.1 with EVR and Miscrosoft MPEG-2 decoder. I have tried to tweak ATI registry setting as documented in this thread but with no success; CPU utilization is always 20-40%. I think that for SD it should be 5% or less. I think that DXVA 2.0 should work in my system and the problem is not related to DVBViewer-software because as far as I know, it is the MPEG-2 decoder filter that uses DXVA 2.0 interface.

Do you know that is there any special registry settings or something else that is needed for SD MPEG-2 hardware acceleration?

P.S I have tested this same set up using X1600 card from ASUS but it used also software decoding. Thanks in andvance.

PDVD is a piece of garbage :-( You just need see how easily basic codecs play Bluray/HDDVD video once you decrypt them - there's simply no valid excuse for the whole range of problems it has.


I've been bored today looking to see just how bad PDVD is with this. To see just how much processing power is used with full DXVA of some of my HD-DVD's, I ripped Shrek 3 to hard disk and then demuxed the main movie .evos. Playing just the demuxed video stream in PDVD, the file is working great with DXVA - I can really see the HD 2400 is doing its job nicely. Not stuttering video at all, and processor usage of maybe 10%.

Playing off the HD-DVD itself, the video stutters badly. Playing the HD-DVD from the hard disk, I'm also seeing 100% cpu usage.

I tried remuxing the main video stream with just the main audio stream (leaving out any secondary streams and subtitles) into a new EVO to see how this plays, and the CPU usage goes down to approx 80-90% and the video still stutters in PDVD.

I'm pretty much clueless about this stuff, but I think this shows what you were talking about. PDVD is extremely ineffecient with CPU cycles, and the HD 2400 is doing its job perfectly.

Not sure where PDVD is choking up the CPU though - maybe by downmixing the DD+ audio to just DD. I've got a DD receiver, and I thought by enabling the SPDIF in PDVD would just send the raw DD+ stream to it, but after searching on Google about it I think it's possible since it's not a DD+ receiver PDVD downmixes it before sending to to the SPDIF. I might look to see if I can find any movie on HD-DVD that has just a regular DD track to check this.

But all of the issues I have with HD-DVD playback can now be attibuted to PDVD itself and not with DXVA of the video file.

I hate to just jump in here, but has anyone been able to get a 5.1 digital bitstream form their ATI 2400HD Pro HDMI output? I have mine hooked up to a new Onkyo 605 with HDMI 1.3a capability, but the Onkyo is only seeing two channel PCM. I am sure this has already been cover here and I apologize if it has. I am running Vista 32.

I've been experimenting with different versions of the Cyberlink h.264 decoder, trying to work around the 20fps bug. I found that build 1.99.0.1405 (thanks, ShadowRunner!) plays back at the correct framerate... when it doesn't just give me a black screen.

So now, if I take a 720p MKV with the black screen problem and drop it into GraphEdit, it makes a nice, simple graph for the Video: MKV source -> Cyberlink H.264/AVC Decoder -> Video Renderer. Hit play, and I get audio, but black screen video.

BUT... if I delete the Cyberlink H.264/AVC Decoder filter, re-add it, and re-wire it, creating the EXACT SAME graph, it plays back just fine. No black screen. WTF?

I'd be curious if anyone else with the black screen MKV problem could duplicate this, or if it's just something wonky with my setup.

-Florp

Hi guys,

I just installed my first HTPC (CD E6550, 2 GB RAM, 500 GB HDD, ATI2400Pro, Win XP) and connected it to my Philips 47PFL9732 (1920*1080) via HDMI.

I selected the 1080p resolution (tried 1080p25, 1080p50, 1080p60) and it works great, except that every time I move the mouse, edges of text and icons on desktop start to flicker.

When I stop moving the mouse the flickering also stops.

If I select 720p everything is good, no flickering.

Any ideas??

Thanks

I've been experimenting with different versions of the Cyberlink h.264 decoder, trying to work around the 20fps bug.

You can fix files so that the latest decoder works with the 20fps bug - you don't need to reencode them either:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=972503


Nothing you can do about the blackscreen bug though, that's a separate issue.

I use DVBViewer Pro 3.9.1 with EVR and Miscrosoft MPEG-2 decoder. I have tried to tweak ATI registry setting as documented in this thread but with no success; CPU utilization is always 20-40%. I think that for SD it should be 5% or less.

I have had 2400Pro/AMD3200 with working hw acceleration and 20-40% seems normal for mpeg2 SD with current ATI drivers.

I have had 2400Pro/AMD3200 with working hw acceleration and 20-40% seems normal for mpeg2 SD with current ATI drivers.

When hardware accel is on 20-40 % is too much of cpu power.
Barton mobile 2500+ shows 13-19% not for a process but whole machine

Hi guys,

I just installed my first HTPC (CD E6550, 2 GB RAM, 500 GB HDD, ATI2400Pro, Win XP) and connected it to my Philips 47PFL9732 (1920*1080) via HDMI.

I selected the 1080p resolution (tried 1080p25, 1080p50, 1080p60) and it works great, except that every time I move the mouse, edges of text and icons on desktop start to flicker.

When I stop moving the mouse the flickering also stops.

If I select 720p everything is good, no flickering.

Any ideas??

Thanks
I've got no ideas on the flickering, but was wondering if you realise that at 1080p25, 1080p50 or 1080p60 you are not displaying HD material with it's native frame rate which is 24fps. I experienced the disadvantages displaying HD material with a non-HD frame rate, i.e. judder. Judder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judder) is very irritating, especially on large screens. Probably your tv is only able to display in 25, 50 and 60Hz, but if you´re lucky it can adjust to a HD-native frame rate. Please note that your videocard has to output at the same frame rate as well. You can achieve this by installing the freeware program Powerstrip. Powerstrip is very easy to use and offers the possibility to make a profile for every frame rate which makes switching a piece of cake. In my case my projector adjusted it's frame rate automatically when I manually changed the output frame rate of my videocard from 50Hz to 48Hz (or more exact 47.96Hz) manually. It's possible your tv does the same which makes starting with the output frame rate of your videocard first. In my Home Theatre the visual experience improved bigtime, no more irritation. Hope it helps you and maybe others as well.

Seems like websites tend to give bad reviews on AGP based HD 2000 series video cards. It seems to be all about driver issues because ATI apparently won't support them. If you utilize all the tweaks this forum states, is it a good thing to get one of these cards, specifically HIS HD 2600 pro agp card (512 mb- <$85 after rebate) or in hindsite would you leave it alone?

I use my computer with MCE 2005 (xp pro) and mostly watch HD from OTA broadcasts and also do video editing. although I like the capability of having hardware acceleration in the future its not something I need right now (unless it helps in video editing?). Though I have always had ATI cards it doesn't seem like Nvidia has near the problem with drivers.

I selected the 1080p resolution (tried 1080p25, 1080p50, 1080p60) and it works great, except that every time I move the mouse, edges of text and icons on desktop start to flicker.

When I stop moving the mouse the flickering also stops.

If I select 720p everything is good, no flickering.

The flickering to me sounds like you're actually sending an interlaced to the television. My 60hz plasma displays the same flickering behavior when I send it a 1080i signal, but it's fine with 720p and 1080p. Don't really know what to suggest about this, though. :(

Sorry about that, but you can still do it manually,
Install 7.7, copy over the ati dll file to your desktop
Install 7.12, after the error follow DeusEX's guide:
add the ini entries to the ini files
Install 7.12 this time it should work
When 7.12 is installed go into safe mode and replace the ati dll with the old one, then reboot
Apply DeusEx patches and reboot

Everything "should" be working, if not 8.1 should solve a LOT of problems

I'll be installing Vista 32-bit this afternoon with an HD2600 Pro. I want h/w acceleration; will these steps provide it? Also, after the first step above, should one remove the 7.7 drivers before attempting the first install of 7.12? Thanks a lot for your help.

I'll be installing Vista 32-bit this afternoon with an HD2600 Pro. I want h/w acceleration; will these steps provide it? Also, after the first step above, should one remove the 7.7 drivers before attempting the first install of 7.12? Thanks a lot for your help.

You are right, 7.7 should be removed, my mistake.

It "Should" work, please let me know how it went so i can help other vista people

I will post back with details later this afternoon. What's the simplest way to test for acceleration?

Edit: Also, what kind of error will 7.12 give?

play a h264 hddvd or bluray in powerdvd

We really need a 10 second testfile


EDit:

7.12 will tell you it cannot find a videocard or something

HI
I am having some of the sam issues as many others and just can't get HD movies to play well. I have an HIS HD2600XT video card and need desperatly to utilize the hardware accelerator feature. I am trying to play MkV files that are 720p and 1080p res. I can play some 720p with close to 100% CPU usage. I have checked over the forum pages and cant figure it out. I was hoping to play all types of resolutions with this new video card
I currently have:
1.)media player classic as my player.
2.) Haali media splitter
2.)Coreavc v 1.6 as my video decoder. set as prefered
3.)ffdshow for audio.

MY system is:
a7n8x motherbooard
Barton 3200XP
WIndows XP sp2
1.5 GB ram
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I would really appreciate some help from one of the experts here!

I am installing a 2600XT into a Vista 32 machine, and am a little confused about which drivers to use... I noticed above that someone mentions the 7.7 drivers as being 'good' for Vista, so I found and installed them. But now I also read about the multitude of 'tweaks' that can be done to upgrade them to 7.12 (DeusEx patches etc)...

What I'd really like to know is:

1. What do I lose by sticking with 7.7?
2. What do I gain by using the 'special' way to upgrade to 7.12 versus the normal install?

Thank you in advance :)

Install 7.7, copy over the ati dll file to your desktop
Install 7.12, after the error follow DeusEX's guide:
add the ini entries to the ini files
Install 7.12 this time it should work
When 7.12 is installed go into safe mode and replace the ati dll with the old one, then reboot
Apply DeusEx patches and reboot

Everything "should" be working, if not 8.1 should solve a LOT of problems

I'm confused as to why this is required.

I have 7.11 installed right now with our Vista 32 based HTPC (was planning to install 7.12 tonight).

From what I can tell, DXVA is working fine - without any tweaks. When playing Blue-ray DVDs and HD-DVDs the CPU utilization is typically between 2% and 6% (depending on the format - I think it is VC-1 that is 2%). Even though we have a Quad core Q6600 processor, I still imagine DXVA must be working to see 2-6% CPU when watching HD stuff. We also see about the same CPU utilization when watching mpeg-2 HD content (digitally recorded dvr-ms files using an R5000HD modded STB and Media Center with the default Microsoft decoder).

Basically I installed the driver, installed PowerDVD Ultra and it works.

In order to get good image quality I did need to add the TRDenoise=0 registry entry as well as turn down color enhancement and fleshtone in CCC (disabling the check mark turned them back on st 25% so I have to leave the check mark on and the sliders down at 1) as well as crank up the overall brightness to +20 and turn the contrast down to 85%. No DXVA hacks though. Grey levels are consistent within Media Center with SD and HD as well as within PowerDVD without any additional registry hacks (grey levels are totally out with WMP, but we don't use it).

Is this "no DXVA" a specific issue with 7.12 that requires the 7.7 hack to get DXVA working within Vista?

There is one type of DXVA that doesn't work and never has. That is our WMV-HD disks (WM9?) do not use DXVA. When those are playing, the CPU is working at around 20-25%. If I enable DXVA for WMV through the registry hack and within WMP, we end up with a black or green screen when any WMV file is played. I have not been able to get DXVA for WMV files to work at all with Vista (worked fine in MCE2005), and that includes when 7.7 was installed. Is your hack supposed to get DXVA working for WMV-HD disks?

I installed 7.7 and PowerDVD says there is no DXVA acceleration, but I am having trouble getting a BD to play. What ati dll am I supposed to copy? There are numerous dlls in my system folder that start with ati, but none named ati.dll.

Ok, nevermind. PowerDVD is working fine now. Playing Ratatouille BD and playback is very smooth. This is with 7.7 drivers. Any particular reason I should go to 7.12? My system is an Athlon 64 X2 BE-2300 (1.9ghz), 1gb DDR2, Radeon HD2600 Pro, some soundcard to pass audio via coax, and the Lite-On BD drive. With the Blu-ray playing, CPU usage bounces between 35 and 50%. One time I saw it spike to 60%. Should it be lower with DXVA going? My CPU is not particularly beefy.

I tried the omega drivers for XP and got no HW acceleration in PowerDVD 3516. Moving back to the 7.7 drivers gives me HW acceleration, but it also gives me significant underscan that I could not find a way to fix. That's a deal-breaker for me.

I'm so glad I wasted my money upgrading to a 2600 for HW acceleration. :rolleyes:

I would really appreciate some help from one of the experts here!

I am installing a 2600XT into a Vista 32 machine, and am a little confused about which drivers to use... I noticed above that someone mentions the 7.7 drivers as being 'good' for Vista, so I found and installed them. But now I also read about the multitude of 'tweaks' that can be done to upgrade them to 7.12 (DeusEx patches etc)...

What I'd really like to know is:

1. What do I lose by sticking with 7.7?
2. What do I gain by using the 'special' way to upgrade to 7.12 versus the normal install?

Thank you in advance :)

7.12 fixes a lot of issues with hardware acceleration, some things decode a lot faster now.

I'm confused as to why this is required.

I have 7.11 installed right now with our Vista 32 based HTPC (was planning to install 7.12 tonight).

From what I can tell, DXVA is working fine - without any tweaks. When playing Blue-ray DVDs and HD-DVDs the CPU utilization is typically between 2% and 6% (depending on the format - I think it is VC-1 that is 2%). Even though we have a Quad core Q6600 processor, I still imagine DXVA must be working to see 2-6% CPU when watching HD stuff. We also see about the same CPU utilization when watching mpeg-2 HD content (digitally recorded dvr-ms files using an R5000HD modded STB and Media Center with the default Microsoft decoder).

Basically I installed the driver, installed PowerDVD Ultra and it works.

In order to get good image quality I did need to add the TRDenoise=0 registry entry as well as turn down color enhancement and fleshtone in CCC (disabling the check mark turned them back on st 25% so I have to leave the check mark on and the sliders down at 1) as well as crank up the overall brightness to +20 and turn the contrast down to 85%. No DXVA hacks though. Grey levels are consistent within Media Center with SD and HD as well as within PowerDVD without any additional registry hacks (grey levels are totally out with WMP, but we don't use it).

Is this "no DXVA" a specific issue with 7.12 that requires the 7.7 hack to get DXVA working within Vista?

There is one type of DXVA that doesn't work and never has. That is our WMV-HD disks (WM9?) do not use DXVA. When those are playing, the CPU is working at around 20-25%. If I enable DXVA for WMV through the registry hack and within WMP, we end up with a black or green screen when any WMV file is played. I have not been able to get DXVA for WMV files to work at all with Vista (worked fine in MCE2005), and that includes when 7.7 was installed. Is your hack supposed to get DXVA working for WMV-HD disks?

The 7.7 DLL copy to 7.12 is only needed on systems with "AGP"

I installed 7.7 and PowerDVD says there is no DXVA acceleration, but I am having trouble getting a BD to play. What ati dll am I supposed to copy? There are numerous dlls in my system folder that start with ati, but none named ati.dll.

the DLL is called: "ati3duag.dll"

Ok, nevermind. PowerDVD is working fine now. Playing Ratatouille BD and playback is very smooth. This is with 7.7 drivers. Any particular reason I should go to 7.12? My system is an Athlon 64 X2 BE-2300 (1.9ghz), 1gb DDR2, Radeon HD2600 Pro, some soundcard to pass audio via coax, and the Lite-On BD drive. With the Blu-ray playing, CPU usage bounces between 35 and 50%. One time I saw it spike to 60%. Should it be lower with DXVA going? My CPU is not particularly beefy.

Not sure about the CPU usage, sounds about right for original discs if you account for realtime decrypting.
7.12 fixes some issues with DXVA and repairs the broken MPEG2 decoder

I tried the omega drivers for XP and got no HW acceleration in PowerDVD 3516. Moving back to the 7.7 drivers gives me HW acceleration, but it also gives me significant underscan that I could not find a way to fix. That's a deal-breaker for me.

I'm so glad I wasted my money upgrading to a 2600 for HW acceleration. :rolleyes:

Did you copy over the ati3duag.dll from the AGP folder in safe mode?

HI
I am having some of the sam issues as many others and just can't get HD movies to play well. I have an HIS HD2600XT video card and need desperatly to utilize the hardware accelerator feature. I am trying to play MkV files that are 720p and 1080p res. I can play some 720p with close to 100% CPU usage. I have checked over the forum pages and cant figure it out. I was hoping to play all types of resolutions with this new video card
I currently have:
1.)media player classic as my player.
2.) Haali media splitter
2.)Coreavc v 1.6 as my video decoder. set as prefered
3.)ffdshow for audio.

MY system is:
a7n8x motherbooard
Barton 3200XP
WIndows XP sp2
1.5 GB ram
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.


Those stats are completely correct for CoreAVC

If you want a better result you will have to use powerdvd and fix your mkv files

@tetsuo55 & ExDeus
I reread till several pages back about the x264 MKV's using h/w acceleration and noticed that you seem to have figured it out. Is there an easy way (hex editor or something) to change the header info (L4.1 instead of L5.1) so I can easily fix all MKV's for h/w accelrated playback? Btw, I have a lot of admiration for your hard work on ATi 2X00 matters. Thanks a lot for that and that to come! :-)

Hello,
I'm a long time reader at AVS and occasional poster, and while I usually find a good 'search' will answer most of my questions, unfortunately I'm in a little bit of a time bind and looking to make a video card purchase at lunch today as I’d like to have this machine up and running for company this weekend. So maybe you guys can help me out. Right now I know just enough to be dangerous :)

OK, so here goes, building a new HTPC, no gaming required.

Requirements:
1. AGP- still a tossup between a 6200/6600 NVIDIA and a 2400/2600 ATI.
2. Comprehensive video hardware acceleration (P4 2.4)*
3. DVD/VC1/x.264/xvid/etc video playback.
4. Windows XP compatible features.
5. Compatibility with Zoom Player, FFDshow upscaling to 1080i CRT.
6. One DVI for HDTV (no dual DVI or HDMI required)
7. Stable Performance.

Concerns:
1. AGP compatibility issues.
2. P4s limited power for VC1 and other processing.
3. Deinterlacing quality at standard and HD resolutions.
4. Ability to adjust noise reduction
5. Fit for my needs vs. 6200/6600 nvidia.


* I have mostly car track videos so image quality is not ultimately as important as all around reliable hardware acceleration to keep the old P4 2.4 alive. Note: with a 9700 pro, playing 720p WMV the P4 does stutter a little as CPU is mostly maxed, so (I take it) video card VC1 acceleration is required for this machine, apparently ruling out the nvidia AGP offerings. Although it makes me wonder how much better the 6200/6600 nvidia parts would do with the VC1 over my 9700 pro, just by virtue of raw horsepower, even if technically no hardware (VC1) acceleration is present. I don’t have much WMV/VC1 and nothing over 720p so the Nvidias may actually be feasible.

Knowing what you know now, which would you buy if you were me?
Thanks in advance.

Hi, I've been trying to follow the instructions in this thread to get the hxva to work on vista 32, but so far the only drivers I've been able to install are the Sapphire and Visiontek ones. I tried installing the version 7.7 from ati, but my card is not recognised (sapphire hd 2600 pro agp); I added it to the ini, and it still doesn't work (also did it for 7.12 with the same result). I'm running out of ideas... did anyone got the sapphire working on vista? I'm not sure what to try next any advice would be really helpful.

The 7.7 DLL copy to 7.12 is only needed on systems with "AGP"

Ah. This makes more sense.

Do you have any information on how to get DXVA working for WMV-HD content within Vista for the ATI HD 2600XT 512MB PCIe?

We have enough CPU power that WMV-HD still plays smoothly, but I would prefer to get DXVA working.

BTW, a while ago I tried a fresh MCE2005 install and WMV-HD played perfectly with DXVA. I've performed many fresh Vista installs and none provide any DXVA for WMV-HD.

I have a weird problem, hope somebody can she some light. I recently switched my video card to HD2400pro. I had it hooked up to the display using a regular DVI to hdmi cable and now i have it hooked up using the ATI dvi-hdmi adapter and then a hdmi cable to my tv. The past few days i have been seeing the following problems.

1. When i wake up the system from standby, PC freezes. (never did that with onboard video and with the dvi-hdmi cable. but happens with this adapter. This is intermittent too.
2. When the system does wake up fine, Vista mediacenter shows a black screen. mouse/remote/keyboard doesnt work inside VMC.
3. This morning i woke up the system, VMC started fine, but i dont get any audio from inside VMC, but when i use mediaplayer classic or any other player i do get sound through my HDMI. i restarted VMC but still a no go.

System spec:
Am2 5200+ x2
gigabyte 690G motherboard
2x1G ddr2-667
Vista32
HD2400pro running 7.7 catalyst with registry tweaks thats been mentioned here.

Did you copy over the ati3duag.dll from the AGP folder in safe mode?
No, because I have a PCIe card and the instructions said that's only for AGP systems.

Just a quick question.

My mate is thinking of getting an AGP 2x00 card, what is the current state of play regarding hardware acceleration, are we still waiting for the next driver release to fix things? Or is it more complicated than that?

Regards

Guys,

Does anybody know the status of bios versions on these cards? I have a very early 2400 Pro with bios version 010.051.000.002 and I can't get HD-DVD's nor Blu-rays to play for more than a few seconds with the Crysis hotfix drivers (7.11+?) and the latest version of Power-DVD. It will simply play the video, with either corruption or a black screen for a few seconds before crashing the display driver. A new 2600 XT works flawlessly in the same machine with the same driver/software revisions but I do need to get the 2400 Pro working in this machine instead. The 2400 Pro works in every other way.

Is it simply a case of contacting Sapphire for a new bios revision (or does sombody have a direct link?) or is this something that will not be fixed?

Thanks,

Russ.

S

Those stats are completely correct for CoreAVC

If you want a better result you will have to use powerdvd and fix your mkv files

Thanks for the response
So i should use Power dvd decoder. I thought that coreavc is the fastest but with less quality.
Also what is meant by fix your mkv files?

I was also thinking that maybe my power supply is not providing enough juice. In 3Dmark06 it is rated in the 25th percentile. I have a 500 watt total with 12v18a rail. Some of the certified power supply have the same amount though?

Also I am using the latest omega drivers

Need some help. Just got a Sapphire 2600XT 512. After hooking it up, both the CCC information page and CPU-z program report the PCIe bus as x8 instead of x16. There is nothing I can change in the PC Bios. Any ideas how can I get x16?

Over at http://www.guru3d.com

in the downloads section.

Downloading, I'll give them a whurl tonight. :cool:

Over at http://www.guru3d.com

in the downloads section.

Downloading, I'll give them a whurl tonight. :cool:


It's 0801081427-8.452-080107a-057828E-ATI, so really bang up to date.

Ini file set up to support the 2400 AGP, 3650agp and 3850 AGP, but not the 2600? Weird - if it works for the 2400AGP should work for the 2600AGP though, so easy tweak there.

Looks from the .ini this is an update to the Crysis drivers, as the denoise/detail sliders appear to be there.

Off to test on my backup setp.....

Looking forward to hearing results. I would test but I won't be home for a couple of hours.

It's 0801081427-8.452-080107a-057828E-ATI, so really bang up to date.

Ini file set up to support the 2400 AGP, 3650agp and 3850 AGP, but not the 2600? Weird - if it works for the 2400AGP should work for the 2600AGP though, so easy tweak there.

Looks from the .ini this is an update to the Crysis drivers, as the denoise/detail sliders appear to be there.

Off to test on my backup setp.....

Looks like the PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_9587 designation for the ATI HD 2600Pro AGP is support further down the INI file as "ATI HD 2600 Series".

Hope it works.

Seems pretty stable. They've done nothing about hd levels expansion, and you still need use usebt601csc=1, but pretty much everything else works.

For 2600 users: just unzip the file, find the lh.inf and delete all reference to 2400. It'll then install properly.

No denoise/detail sliders btw - it seems this is a future feature, maybe accidentally exposes in Crysis.

>> you still need use usebt601csc=1

Sigh. Thanks for saving me the trouble of testing this myself.

Hello,
I'm a long time reader at AVS and occasional poster, and while I usually find a good 'search' will answer most of my questions, unfortunately I'm in a little bit of a time bind and looking to make a video card purchase at lunch today as I’d like to have this machine up and running for company this weekend. So maybe you guys can help me out. Right now I know just enough to be dangerous :)

OK, so here goes, building a new HTPC, no gaming required.

Requirements:
1. AGP- still a tossup between a 6200/6600 NVIDIA and a 2400/2600 ATI.
2. Comprehensive video hardware acceleration (P4 2.4)*
3. DVD/VC1/x.264/xvid/etc video playback.
4. Windows XP compatible features.
5. Compatibility with Zoom Player, FFDshow upscaling to 1080i CRT.
6. One DVI for HDTV (no dual DVI or HDMI required)
7. Stable Performance.

Concerns:
1. AGP compatibility issues.
2. P4s limited power for VC1 and other processing.
3. Deinterlacing quality at standard and HD resolutions.
4. Ability to adjust noise reduction
5. Fit for my needs vs. 6200/6600 nvidia.


* I have mostly car track videos so image quality is not ultimately as important as all around reliable hardware acceleration to keep the old P4 2.4 alive. Note: with a 9700 pro, playing 720p WMV the P4 does stutter a little as CPU is mostly maxed, so (I take it) video card VC1 acceleration is required for this machine, apparently ruling out the nvidia AGP offerings. Although it makes me wonder how much better the 6200/6600 nvidia parts would do with the VC1 over my 9700 pro, just by virtue of raw horsepower, even if technically no hardware (VC1) acceleration is present. I don’t have much WMV/VC1 and nothing over 720p so the Nvidias may actually be feasible.

Knowing what you know now, which would you buy if you were me?
Thanks in advance.

This is slightly off topic, but I think it has merit.

I tried in vain to upgrade my 5 year old Dell 4550 to play HD smoothly. Well in its previous config, only ABC and PBS local OTA HD played smoothly (P4, 2GB@333hz, ATI AIW 9600XT, etc). I spent another $200+ to get smooth playback with a HD2400Pro 512MB first and then a Geforce 8600GS and a Montego DDL sound card.

Still wouldn't work smoothly, wasn't getting DXVA acceleration, tried the hacks.

I said F it and took everything back to Fry's. I then took my $312 total, got a case $89($59AR), Gigabyte AMD 690 board (look on the Gigabyte thread), AMD 5000+ Black Edition and 3GB@800Hz; all for about $420 total.

Plays local OTA HD up to 1080i at 40% CPU usage and that was with Prime95 torture test running in the back ground. Its also quieter than my Dell with 3 fans total and the Dell had 1.

Gigabyte recommends a CPU higher than 4400+ to play BluRay and HD-DVD smoothly. I am WAY above that, at 2.91Ghz with a 14.5 clock multiplier. Once I go back to the original bios I can put it back to 15 and go back to 3.0Ghz.

I have no doubt it will play anything I throw at it and if I wanna do a little serious gaming, toss in a $170 HD3850, crushes the HD2xxx series and effortless HD playback with ultra low CPU usage.

If I was using a HTPC case, then a low profile HD2400 Pro would be fine if you just wanted to watch tv/movies and mild gaming.

Just some food for though, a modern CPU will do more than a faster GPU card will and it will last longer than a card upgrade.

Hey guys, thank you all so much for your hard work and helping us 2600 owners out!

I recently followed tetsuo55's guide and installed the latest 7.12 Omega Driver and installed the registry tweaks. Later in my post I've included my current utilization stats.

I have a few questions:

Q1: With this latest beta driver release 8.1, what is the recommended driver / tweak configuration (installation) for the 2600 pro AGP on XP? Should I download this new release and install? What tweaks to add?

Q2: Did I transfer the the ati3duag.dll file correctly?

When I did the procedure below in blue, the files ati3duag.dll were exactly the same size and had the same creation date in both folders (system32 & the omega AGP folder). Should they have been different?

Reboot into safe mode, and then copy
C:\Program Files\Radeon Omega Drivers\v4.8.442\2KXP_INF\AGP\ati3duag.dll
TO
C:\WINDOWS\system32\

And overwrite the file, doing this fixes directX/

Q3: My "ATI Overdrive" option is greyed out in the ATI tray tools menu. Why?



My utilization stats from streaming dvb (satellite)

I'm using my HTPC to stream HD DVB through DVB core (my theatre) to a 1080i plasma screen with native resolution of 1360 x 768. Audio though Spdif to A/V reciever from motherboard. Cyberlink pdvd7 video codec, nvidia audio codec. Should I have the output res on AGP card matching native resolution of TV?

Output resolution of card set to 1280x720 (720p) (should it match the native resolution of tv?)

On 720p content with dolby digital 2.0; GPU = 20%, CPU = 60%
on 1080i content with dolby digital 5.1; GPU = 55%, CPU = 90%

My setup...

Sapphire HD 2600 Pro 512 AGP
Asus a7n8x deluxe mobo, nForce2
Mobile Barton 2500+ (overclocked to 2.4ghz)
WIndows XP sp2
2 GB ram
1080i plasma


All the best...

Rod

Hi there.

I have some sound problems with my Sapphire Radeon HD 2600XT. I have connected my PC to my receiver with a HDMI cable. The video part works just fine, but the sound doesn't. Regular 2,0 stereo works, but i cant get 5,1 & DTS out.

My system is:

PC:
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R
Intel Core 2 duo E6750
Corsair 2x1GB
Sappire Radeon HD2600XT
Vista Home Premium

Reveiver:
Panasonic XR-59

My settings:

http://offtopics.dk/lyd1.jpg

http://offtopics.dk/lyd2.jpg

http://offtopics.dk/lyd3.jpg

The last image here, should there be a speciel driver for the audiochip on the
2600xt or is Microsoft High Definition Audio fine?

As you can se i have set the HDMI sound output to default,. and 2,0 works fine. What do i do to get 5.1 & DTS to my receiver?

Someone told me to set PowerDVD & MCE to SPDIF Passthrough, but i havent got that option?

I Really hope someone can help :)

Having now got some x264 encodes working DXVA on my 2600Pro (running XP), what is the current state of DXVA on WMV files (VC-1)?

Is there anyway i can get the same sort of results as the x264 encodes? ie virtually no CPU usage and the card doing the work?

Cheers

Hey guys, thank you all so much for your hard work and helping us 2600 owners out!

I recently followed tetsuo55's guide and installed the latest 7.12 Omega Driver and installed the registry tweaks. Later in my post I've included my current utilization stats.

I have a few questions:

Q1: With this latest beta driver release 8.1, what is the recommended driver / tweak configuration (installation) for the 2600 pro AGP on XP? Should I download this new release and install? What tweaks to add?

Q2: Did I transfer the the ati3duag.dll file correctly?

When I did the procedure below in blue, the files ati3duag.dll were exactly the same size and had the same creation date in both folders (system32 & the omega AGP folder). Should they have been different?

Reboot into safe mode, and then copy
C:\Program Files\Radeon Omega Drivers\v4.8.442\2KXP_INF\AGP\ati3duag.dll
TO
C:\WINDOWS\system32\

And overwrite the file, doing this fixes directX/

Q3: My "ATI Overdrive" option is greyed out in the ATI tray tools menu. Why?



My utilization stats from streaming dvb (satellite)

I'm using my HTPC to stream HD DVB through DVB core (my theatre) to a 1080i plasma screen with native resolution of 1360 x 768. Audio though Spdif to A/V reciever from motherboard. Cyberlink pdvd7 video codec, nvidia audio codec. Should I have the output res on AGP card matching native resolution of TV?

Output resolution of card set to 1280x720 (720p) (should it match the native resolution of tv?)

On 720p content with dolby digital 2.0; GPU = 20%, CPU = 60%
on 1080i content with dolby digital 5.1; GPU = 55%, CPU = 90%

My setup...

Sapphire HD 2600 Pro 512 AGP
Asus a7n8x deluxe mobo, nForce2
Mobile Barton 2500+ (overclocked to 2.4ghz)
WIndows XP sp2
2 GB ram
1080i plasma


All the best...

Rod

I'm using mythatre as well... your CPU use is high because your decoding the encrypted stream via emunation... that’s whatz using up your CPU cycles... decrypting the stream of data from the Sat you are watching takes up alot of CPU cycles. If you record the MPEG2 at 1080i then play it back your CPU usage will be very low since the video is already decrypted. And your hardware on your video card is good at playing back MPEG2.

Makes sense thanks.

Any thoughts on my question on resolution matching? Content - Card - Native?

R

I use the ATI remote wonder and have hotkeys setup with my ATI Caytalist CP.. so when I hit a key on the remote I can go from 1024x768 for SD content to 720p to 1080p.. works great once you setup your hot keys.. and when you run 1024x768 in my theatre on your HDTV it makes the 4:3 content fit the screen. very simple and the ATI cards are very good for changing resolutions on the fly in mytheatre.. I have not had any issue with cashing or anything.

98810

Hey you go guys.

Fix your 720p or lower resolution files with this program. Just navigate to your HD/SD files and select the new IDC then click change.

Will work on MKV's and AVI's, no need to demux/remux.

Enjoy.

dj4monie,
Thanks for the reply. The thing is I don't need to play games on this machine since I have another one, much faster for that purpose. So I guess the 2400 should work for me. Still, I'm a bit hesitant given all the talk of driver issues on ATI cards. How would you compare your 2600 pro to your 8600 GT? After having tried both, which seems to have the least issues at this point?

Also BTW, if you've gotten x.264 acceleration working on both how does it compare? This is the main thing I need the card for. OTA HD works well now. And is the 8600 hosed for WMV HD acceleration the same as the 2400?
Thanks again :)

Also BTW, if you've gotten x.264 acceleration working on both how does it compare?

Once you've run the fix 720p files work perfectly. This is a powerdvd fault, nothing really to do with the card.

The 2400 series do have a lot of issues, but I think these are hardware or bios - if either happens, just take the thing back. The 2600 work a lot better in this regard, and do better deinterlacing to boot, so if you watch live HDTV then they're a better choice (particularly mpeg2).

Once you've run the fix 720p files work perfectly. This is a powerdvd fault, nothing really to do with the card.

The 2400 series do have a lot of issues, but I think these are hardware or bios - if either happens, just take the thing back. The 2600 work a lot better in this regard, and do better deinterlacing to boot, so if you watch live HDTV then they're a better choice (particularly mpeg2).

Cool, thanks. It's actually sounding like the 2600 will be the best choice for me now. I watch a lot of mpeg2, OTA and DVD so good deinterlacing is important.

BTW, I see an awful lot of talk about user PowerDVD. Just to clarify, this isn't required for video acceleration is it? I'm pretty well attached to my ZP and FFdshow, esp for upscaling DVDs they just look so much better. It would be a shame to lose this functionality for video acceleration, though there are always tradeoffs...

Just to clarify, this isn't required for video acceleration is it? I'm pretty well attached to my ZP and FFdshow, esp for upscaling DVDs they just look so much better. It would be a shame to lose this functionality for video acceleration, though there are always tradeoffs...

FFDshow doesn't support acceleration at all, however for upscaling modern cards can match it anyway.

To accelerate VC1, I think only nero and powerdvd support full offload acceleration (aka VLD). MPEG2 acceleration is still the old fashioned half-the-cpu-use type, so more decoders can use it.

I have got a problem that the PC dont awakes from hibernation or standby. Instead it is in a kind of freezed mode with black screen. Only a restart helps where the PC boots newly.

Iam using XP and 7.12

I have found one who had the same problems. He switched nack to 7.11 and the problem was gone.

Do you have similar probs?

Edit: Just found this post one page back:

I have a weird problem, hope somebody can she some light. I recently switched my video card to HD2400pro. I had it hooked up to the display using a regular DVI to hdmi cable and now i have it hooked up using the ATI dvi-hdmi adapter and then a hdmi cable to my tv. The past few days i have been seeing the following problems.

1. When i wake up the system from standby, PC freezes. (never did that with onboard video and with the dvi-hdmi cable. but happens with this adapter. This is intermittent too.
2. When the system does wake up fine, Vista mediacenter shows a black screen. mouse/remote/keyboard doesnt work inside VMC.
3. This morning i woke up the system, VMC started fine, but i dont get any audio from inside VMC, but when i use mediaplayer classic or any other player i do get sound through my HDMI. i restarted VMC but still a no go.

System spec:
Am2 5200+ x2
gigabyte 690G motherboard
2x1G ddr2-667
Vista32
HD2400pro running 7.7 catalyst with registry tweaks thats been mentioned here.

Seems that there are more out there having this problem. Can more from you guys can confirm this?

98810

Hey you go guys.

Fix your 720p or lower resolution files with this program. Just navigate to your HD/SD files and select the new IDC then click change.

Will work on MKV's and AVI's, no need to demux/remux.

Enjoy.

Hey DJBlu, nice program you made. Too bad I can't make it work. Whatever MKV file i try, it always replies with 'Error writing to file, please check the file is not open'. It reads the current profile properly. I'm trying to use it on Windows Vista 32bit.

I have got a problem that the PC dont awakes from hibernation or standby. Instead it is in a kind of freezed mode with black screen. Only a restart helps where the PC boots newly.

Iam using XP and 7.12

I have found one who had the same problems. He switched nack to 7.11 and the problem was gone.

Do you have similar probs?

Ctrl+alt+delete and then return to desktop and all is fine!
If you apply the reg tweak at the site below for your card the problem should be gone!

http://exdeus.home.comcast.net/ati-hd2x00/

J.